How We Use and Protect Your Data

We take protection of your data very seriously. We do not collect personally identifiable data. We do store your friend code so we can identify you as having taken part in the study.

Your Pokemon Go data requests contain a wealth of sensitive, identifiable information, including your username, detailed GPS coordinates of your activity, names of friends, and more.

We discard portions of this data and automatically anonymize other parts of it to ensure that your data remains safe. Specifically, we automatically remove all data related to specific GPS locations, user details (e.g., birthdate) and IP addresses. All usernames and IDs, both yours and any in your friends list, are converted into random strings of letters.

By using this site to upload your data, you consent to these data privacy procedures. You will have a further opportunity to confirm (or revoke) this consent at the time of upload.

What Data We Collect

We are interested in only some of the data in your request, and discard the rest. Specifically, the data we store includes:

a) Playtime (how long you've played and when)

b) Game behavior (recent battle history and outcomes)

c) Fitness data (how many steps you've moved, but not any specific locations)

d) Social network (how many friends you have, when they were added---with friends usernames' hashed so as to be anonymous)

e) Purchase history with real-world and in-game currency

How Data Collection Works

Step 1: Request your data from Niantic, as described on this page

Step 2: Upload your data using our donation portal, once you've received it back from Niantic (typically 3-4 weeks)

Step 3: Data is automatically anonymized immediately upon uploading, with the most sensitive data being discarded

Step 4: Inspect and confirm data upload using our data inspector, which allows you to go through the remaining data and ensure you are happy to share it, or to remove certain files or rows. Once you're happy, submit the upload and your data will be stored on our secure university servers

We use the OSD2F framework to ensure that sensitive data is never stored, and that you have control over exactly what pieces of information.

After the data is categorized and preprocessed, it is then displayed back to you, where you can inspect each remaining component and remove any or all rows, columns, or files as they see fit.

Only the data you have consented to share will then be stored securely on Queen Mary University of London servers. Data on these servers is accessible only via ssh for the named researchers on the project.

What We Do With Your Data

We will analyze your data to better understand how people behave in Pokemon Go over time, as relates to playtime, movement, and purchasing.

If you consent, we will combine your Pokemon Go data with information you provide in a separate server about your play motivations, wellbeing, and other experiences.

Data may appear in academic publications, white papers, or similar. You will not be identifiable from your data.

We will share your anonymized data openly with other researchers for transparent science.