Popular mobile apps raise privacy concerns

The virtual map utilized for gathering collectibles in the mobile app Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Mobile apps utilizing location trackers have privacy issues, experts say. (Screen shot by Gillian Blum)

With the release Friday of the mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, people are debating the safety and effectiveness of the app’s location-tracking feature and its necessity when playing the game.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite released in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand on Friday is a mobile game based on the popular franchise of the Wizarding World. Following the same formula as Pokémon Go, also developed by Harry Potter: Wizards Unite developer, Niantic, the app uses tracking technology to follow players’ geographic locations and guides them to various virtual collectibles and challenges within their area.

The game is compelling to many, especially fans of the original franchise, however critics are concerned about privacy.

Bill Frick, a shopper in a Tenleytown CVS, commented on the game’s potential for major technological achievement, but how he sees the danger of an app tracking players’ constant location.

“You want to know if someone’s tracking your whereabouts, and where that information goes,” Frick said.

Critics of apps that require geographic location agree that it is concerning to have someone constantly following players’ locations for the sake of finding virtual wizarding artifacts. They question their own safety as players, knowing that downloading the app gives developers this private information legally and for free.

“I don’t like the fact that someone could know where I was at any given moment,” said Rachel Margolis. “I think that’s kinda creepy.”

Margolis continued to share her fear and concern for where her personal information would be going if she used the app, further emphasizing the privacy risk embedded into the standard game-play of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

“The most concerning privacy issue with this app is the constant tracking of location data,” wrote Tiffany Li in her 2016 article “Pokémon Go and The Law: Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Other Legal Concerns

“Most players leave the app open at all times, waiting for that sweet, sweet buzz of a new wild Pokémon appearing. This means that, effectively, you give permission for Niantic to track your movements all day, every day, wherever you go,” Li continued.

Li emphasized that not only can Niantic track players’ location, but also has little-to-no communication about where this information goes, only furthering privacy concerns among players.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite treats these features almost identically to the preceding app.

However, many argue that using players’ geographic location enhances these games, and allows for them to conquer a major challenge facing humanity in the 21st century: getting people to go outside and play, rather than sitting at home on their phones.

In order to gather the collectibles, among other rarer game features, players need to walk around outside, and stop for a few moments at various checkpoints.

Terumi Rafferty-Osaki, who was wearing a Pokémon Go T-shirt in Tenleytown, agreed the app gets people outside, and he sees even more benefits than just getting people out and into the world.

“If people are doing it for more than the game, and looking at, kinda, like, the points of interest within the game, they’re going to actually learn a lot about (the) city and I think that that’s really awesome,” Rafferty-Osaki said.

Without the geographic location tracker, players would not have the incentive to walk around and explore their towns and cities, instead of sitting on their couch in their pajamas.

In fact, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite not only encourages walking, exploring and traveling, but actually requires players to walk around to make progress in the game through it’s use of a speed tracking software.

If a player is going faster than a typical pedestrian could physically walk or run, the game’s features stop working as well as they typically do, encouraging players to walk and run instead of taking on the passenger seat in an Uber, circling areas filled with checkpoints.

General practitioner Margaret McCartney, in her 2016 BMJ article about the risks and benefits of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite’s predecessor, Pokémon Go, wrote, “most health apps that promote physical activity tend to get users who want to be healthy. Pokémon Go isn’t marketed as a health app, but players still end up doing a lot of walking.”

She emphasized that the game has decreased national obesity, heart attacks suffered and vitamin D deficiency, due to the 2016 app’s need of physical activity.

Overall, despite privacy concerns, people are enjoying the app.

With a current 4.6/5 star rating on the app store, both due to its implementing of popular app developments from Pokémon Go, and its connection to a vast and well-known franchise, it has received positive reviews.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite “feeds my ever needy hunger for wizard lore and fantasy,” as stated in an app review by a reviewer with the screen name Htdman. However, the game is still brand new. After the initial rush of excitement passes, more and more players may begin to recognize the danger of a geographic tracker, and could hang up their robes and wands for good.