Pokemon Go is the hottest game on the internet right now; you’ve got to be living under a rock or totally disconnected from the www to not have heard about it by now. Even if it’s through really weird stories related to Pokemon Go like “The Person Who Found A Dead Body While Playing” or “How Pokemon Go Is Getting People To Go To Church“.
What exactly is Pokemon go?
Well it’s an augmented reality game which involves trying to “catch” Pikachu or Squirtle or other creatures with your smartphone, in pretty much any place that you go. You need to be walking around—on the streets, in public places—to catch the Pokémon. It’s off to a huge start in the United States with over 7.5 Million downloads and generating up to US$1.6M daily!
So whats the danger / malware alert about then?
Well at the time of writing this article, Pokemo Go is only supported in
- Australia
- Canada
- Dominican Republic
- Egypt
- Germany
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Portugal
- Russia
- Spain
- United Kingdom
This means that if your country isn’t yet supported, your game play pretty much sucks. You won’t find any Pikachu, Squirtle or any Gyms in your area. It has been reported that there are malicious .APK files available for download – on unofficial Pokemon Go sites, that claim to have ‘country support or country maps’. Installing these versions of the Pokemon Go app does not work but instead installs malware software on your smartphone. Currently, this only affects Android users.
The best way to deal with this is to only download the app from the Official Pokemon Website OR from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and until your country is supported, you’ve just got to hang in tight before you can join the rest of the ‘pokemoning world’ in your quest to find Pikachu and his friends.
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