Niantic to crack down on rooting in Pokémon GO

App to scan phones for root folder names

Article Discussion* Report error Thursday, August 23, 2018 Reported on Bulbanews by Escparth Originally reported on Arstechnica.com This article brought to you by Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.

Niantic is to crack down on rooting in Pokémon GO by scanning Android phones for any root folder names and items regardless of user's permissions. Pokémon GO will not launch on Android phones that have an empty folder named "MagiskManager" on their SD card. MagiskManager is a popular piece of rooting software.

Pokémon GO logo

When an Android app checks for a file on the phone, the OS sends back an error for a file that doesn't exist because of permissions settings. By monitoring this, Pokémon GO could scan for the existence of certain file names, even if it doesn't have permission to access those files directly.