Since the earliest days of Pokemon GO, cheating has been a major concern for both the players and the developer. Niantic has gotten much better at battling players who exploit the game's vulnerabilities, but it's still always looking for new ways to bust offenders. Unfortunately, the latest strategy has some Android users worried about a violation of privacy.

Some members of the XDA developer forums claim that "Pokemon GO is abusing its read permissions to read Android’s internal storage and search for possible hints that your device is rooted." As you might expect, that is a scary thing to hear for a lot of users.

This new method seems to have been introduced in 0.115.2 as an additional method to cut down on cheating by detecting rooted devices. Here's a reading of what's happening, according to Pokemon GO Hub...

"Allegedly, the new security allows Pokemon GO to read your device’s file and folder names well outside it’s intended storage level, and to identify anything that can be associated with rooting procedures. As the XDA member lays it out, anything that’s either a flashable-looking zip, APKs of root-related apps, log files, Titanium Backup, any folder with “root”, “magisk” or “xposed” in its name can be used to trigger the now dreaded unauthorized device error."

Considering the fairly serious initial reaction from the community, we would not be surprised to see Niantic respond and explain themselves and their process in the very new future.

The negative attention comes just as trainers are heading out to battle the newest Legendary raid boss, Regirock, so hopefully the drama doesn't spoil too much of the fun. We'll keep an eye out for an official response from Niantic, so check back for updates.

Until then, good luck out there, trainers!

Pokemon GO is available now in select regions on Android and iOS devices.

Source: Reddit