this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
70 points (98.6% liked)

Privacy

31609 readers
84 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Title is pretty obvious with more than two seconds of thought, but I figured that it would be important to bring to everyone's attention that Pokémon has confirmed (via this Youtube video) that Sleep does the following:

  • Records audio of you (and your partner) sleeping
  • Requires device sensor permissions to detect how your phone is laying
  • Runs in the background as you sleep

You've seen this time and time again, I know. But most people don't consider this, especially since Pokémon is considered to be childrens' media. I haven't seen any major news outlet cover the privacy implications of this game--please spread the word with people you know. This can't keep happening.

top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What's the point of this game, beyond letting them harvest user data to sell to data brokers? It doesn't seem like this really integrates with Pokemon Go or the Switch games as far as syncing Pokemons between them, and anyone that actually cares about sleep tracking would be using their phone's built-in health app or they'd have some top-rated sleep tracker from the app stores.

If it let you move Switch Pokemon over to be a day-care type thing while you sleep I could kinda see it having some use, but otherwise this just seems like shovelware with a Pokemon theme.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Pokémon fans would eat anything their company feeds them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would this not be reasonably obvious? How else is it going to track your sleep without this data/permissions?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know it's obvious, the point is that it's spyware for kids. Most "normies" do not consider this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If this was some other app this would raise bigger flags. These permissions seem fine for a sleep app. We have to see the terms and conditions of how they handle the data, then we can raise our pitchforks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google Play already lists that they use third parties for data anf analytics. I cannot trust them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I really hope they don't have a similar privacy policy to Niantic because it's horrible. Not only do they collect pretty much everything possible and then share it with third parties. They don't even define all the information they collect, only data they deem identifiable.

This Privacy Policy covers our use of any information that can or could be used to identify you ("Personal Data"). It does not cover information which cannot be used to identify you ("Anonymous Data").

Is this common for a privacy policy? I've never seen it before.

load more comments
view more: next ›