Pokemon GO Researcher Reveals Method To See How Much Niantic Tracks You

It’s no secret that Niantic tracks its players; knowing your exact location whenever the app is active is a fundamental part of Pokemon GO, let alone Niantic’s other mobile titles. But by following specific steps, you can see just how much Niantic knows about you.

Requesting Personal Data From Pokemon GO

According to Reddit user Hotairballoun, getting ahold of all the data Niantic has about you is as simple as sending an email. We often see the data collected by tech corps as shady, black-market ZIP files, but that’s not the case here. In fact, the terms of Pokemon GO’s privacy policy explicitly state that players are entitled to copies of their player data if requested.

So, what are in these files, and how can you get a copy of your own? Hotairballoun claims that Niantic tracks “extremely detailed data,” including how far you’ve traveled, purchase history, session lengths, social connection, and more. Again, you can request a copy of your data by emailing Niantic at [email protected].

User insanemiller shared a simpler and possibly quicker method of requesting your data. All you need to do is:

• Open Pokemon GO
• Navigate to your settings
• Click on Help in the top right corner
• Scroll down and select Chat With Us
• Select Account from the list of prompts
• Select Request My Data
• If there are no prompts, just type Request My Data

You should receive a file and a password (two separate messages) in roughly seven days.

Now that you have your data, what can you do with it? For starters, you can see in brutal detail how much time and money you’ve spent on Pokemon GO. Or you could donate it.

Hotairballou, or Nick Ballou, is a Postdoctoral Researcher affiliated with the Queen Mary University of London and the Oxford Internet Institute and is one-half of a study being conducted to help empower players to understand their gaming. He has asked players to request and donate their data via a study survey.