Catching on to the Pokémon Go Craze

People are playing Pokémon Go everywhere. Are you playing? I downloaded the Pokémon Go app last Tuesday—less than 24 hours after telling a co-worker that I would never download it. I saw more and more hype and just couldn’t stay away any longer. The app is fun to play, and it also rewards players for walking.

Early Sunday morning, my daughter and I went on an adventure. We had a great time walking around. She enjoyed catching Pokémon and I enjoyed the quality time we spent together. I  planned to tackle writing this blog when we got home, but on our way home, I learned about the shootings in Baton Rouge. This really put a dark cloud over our Sunday.

It was Monday before I could focus on writing. Since our Pokémon adventure was fresh in my mind, I decided to provide a fraud fighter’s perspective related to the game. Below are several considerations:

• The app connects you to physical locations and allows players to pick up free items at Pokéstops. You can also interact with others at Gyms. Just remember your mobile device is dropping a trail of GPS breadcrumbs, and at some point these breadcrumbs could be captured and analyzed by others. There is a setting that will allow you to turn off the location tracking, but I am not sure how the app works with this feature turned off. There are many other apps that use this same technology, and you are probably leaving breadcrumbs already. If you choose to play, you should consider the risk of leaving this electronic trail.
• There is a really cool augmented reality (AR) feature that allows you to play the game with your phone’s camera. With this feature, the Pokémon interact with the real world. You can use your camera to take pictures of the action. Be aware of the backdrop when taking a picture because there could be things in the background that you may not want to share with others. You can turn off the AR feature when catching Pokémon by sliding the toggle in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. In the picture attached to this blog, I have included an image with the AR feature “on” and one with the AR feature “off.”
• The game is very addictive, which may cause employees to play the game during work hours. However, we also must consider that employees may spend time during non-working hours answering work emails or calls. Companies are dealing with this technological change where employees are integrating their professional and personal worlds. Employees must be aware of their usage to ensure it doesn’t interfere with productivity.

Pokémon Go has become a global sensation and the enthusiasm of seeing a little monster pop up on the sidewalk or even at your desk has been social media gold. But my hope is that players also remain cognizant of the real-life dangers of allowing access to so much data.

I also ask that you continue to pray for our city and all the people affected by the events our community is dealing with and may face in the future.

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