Pokemon Go became a social phenomenon when it was launched a few months ago. The game required you to locate and catch Pokemon in augmented reality (AR).
The AR setup makes it so that you see the Pokemon world when you look through the camera on your phone. This meant that you had to walk around to look for Pokemon to catch them.
Recently, the National Telecom and Information Technology Board (NTISB) has told its officers to not download the Pokemon Go game. The game was previously banned by the United States and Israel’s defense departments due to security concerns.
How Pokemon Go Can Be a Potential Threat
What makes the game a possible threat to their security is that it turns on GPS automatically and also uses the camera on your phone to view your surroundings. If someone hacks into the game, they can easily locate you using GPS and the camera to view your surroundings. This can cause serious national security problems in sensitive areas.
NTISB’s letter
The letter by NTISB mentions that it poses technical and non-technical threats. The technical threats are the same as the ones mentioned earlier, GPS and camera used to find your location or to spy on you. The non-technical threat is that the person playing the game is not wary of his/her surroundings which can cause the person injury.
You may recall cases of people getting injured by car drivers playing Pokemon Go or pedestrians walking in front of a vehicle while playing the game. Even though the game gained a lot of popularity, it has since then waned with time, with other apps replacing it for the top spot as the most popular app.
wese bhi tajarbukar team k pas awam ki or mulk ki bhalai k liye koi kaam hota, ese me ghareebon ko khailny do bhai
“it turns on GPS automatically” if you turned ON the GPS. Android system cannot allow application to turn on the GPS without user approval.
What about Google Location History?? Everyone is using Google account on android and If Location History is ON then google keep track of your each step (although data is private to the owner of that account).
That does not turn camera on.
You can’t play the game without the GPS. If someone has the game installed the GPS would turn on when you’re looking for pokemon or poke stops.
what the hell is this falcon098 & eagle1978
Send them an email and ask LOL
Yeah I noted. They dont have official Email Accounts ? :-O
What else you can expect from babus :(
Most apps use location, can read messages, use cameras and what not, obviously whoever came up with non sense memo doesn’t know what he or she talking about
Actually for the longest time, Blackberry was doing okay because they made optional smartphone models WITHOUT cameras. That is why sometimes you find pictures of US cabinet members with Blackberry phones instead of Android or iPhone. People in sensitive positions were forbidden from using camera phones.
or maybe cause US govt had a contract with Blackberry that made it mandatory for US govt officials to use only BB phones?
the people in sensitive positions are being trusted, that’s why they have been given access to sensitive information. So the govt is like we trust you with all the secrets just not with the camera phone?
Well Blackberry was also first major company with full encryption (over ten years now). Imagine going back ten years. What were your smartphone options?
Yes, people are vetted for sensitive work, but after all they need to travel and enter rooms /buildings with sensitive infos, and they’re not allowed to take phones with cameras with them. Makes the choice pretty obvious when only Blackberry has non-camera smartphones.
then why not to use Nokia 3310?
It is the best secure phone if you point for camera, messages etc….
How is it secure? And it is not a smartphone dummy
it is secure because you can not connect to high speed internet, you can not store larger files and so no bloatware, no malwares, no viruses
Including no camera, no external memory, no whatsapp and other applications like this, and many more features (specially those you were referring for US cabinet members)
Well, ummmm, people need smartphones for good reason.
It is far far far easier to hack Android phones without going through Pokemon Go.
But what IS HIGHLY LIKELY is that people will install APK from some rando website (because of course it is not officially launched in Pakistan and not on Play Store here), and that APK will be hacked to add malware.
there are apks available that are signed by the developer. So they won’t have malware.
But anyone who sideloads APK won’t be checking the signatures.
That’s a major problem with download APK from sites other than Google Play.