Help: Afraid of a scam

Help Desk
1

I accidentally gave away my Pokémon GO nickname to a third party service which is suspected of scamming (yes I’ve been sloppy I know, but it happens). Is my Pokémon GO account in danger?

At no point I gave my password so I’m not sure anything is going to happen.

Thank you for your help.

2

As long as you didn’t give your password, I think you’ll be fine. Out of curiosity, what were you doing in the first place?

3

While surfing around Italian websites that analyse Pokémon GO and help you calculate IVs and other stuff I clicked on a sort of ad instead of the right link (it’s fair to say I was distracted). It redirected me to a page that asked me my nickname, team and level to create a simple profile (therefore it looked legit enough) but then it asked me to download several apps to proceed. At that point I obviously stopped and acknowledged the mistake.

Probably the scam was about making me buy other apps but you never know, it’s always safe to double check.

Anyway, thank you for your reply!

4

You know from inside the app you can change your nickname, maybe it will be more safe to do so.

5

From my point of view: (doing hacking for a living)
They can’t do anything with your nickname.
To sign in they need your Google account’s email address or your PTC username.
They can’t make a link between your nickname and your PTC or Google account, only Niantic can.

Just a general tip on your account security:

  1. It’s never wrong to change you password regularly
  2. If you’re using Google, turn 2-step verification on within your account settings. This will require you to download the google app, or Google authenticator. When your password is hacked, they still need a second step to sign in.
    In case of the Google app; you need to authenticate your phone to confirm sign in attempts.
    In case of the Google authenticator app; This app requires you to scan a QR-code while setting things up. After this it will generate a new, 6-digit code every 30 seconds based on the shared key between the app and your Google account.

I’m not sure if PTC supports 2-step authentication, but if it does I imagine it will at least work with the Google authenticator app or something similar.

I hope this explanation helped you to secure your account more. It’s already nice to see that you recognized you were probably about to be scammed.

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