By Jacqueline Fick, head of Forensic Services, Cell C

Perhaps they have walked past you: teenagers and young adults walking in wavy lines, holding their phones up as if they are looking for something. Maybe you caught them at their most exciting moment, frantically flicking on their screen while looking just ahead of them. Maybe you are also playing grabbing the opportunity to get some fresh air.

Pokemon Go, the new mobile game craze that has hit the world, is an augmented reality experience. Augmented reality blends the real world with the virtual world. For example, if you hold your phone and look through its camera, you see what the camera sees. Now imagine a digital character, like a dragon, is placed on the image as if it is really there, breathing fire on your lawn. That is augmented reality.

You can’t play this game lying in bed: you have to be out and about to participate. Players have to go to physical locations to catch and train the creatures. They can also fight against other players using their creatures.

But before you start playing there are a few things you need to know. Pokemon Go is not officially available in South Africa yet – and people are downloading the game from other places. This can be problematic, because criminals are already putting “copies” of the game online and tricking people into downloading it, thinking it’s the real thing.  The risk also exists that if you do download a copy from an untrustworthy site, you might also unknowingly be downloading malware. Always make sure that you 100% trust the site you are downloading the file from – I would wait for the official version to be available from the official application stores (Google Play, or Apple App Store).

Once you have it, though – you need to make sure you use it responsibly. Because it sends you out and about, and there is no telling where your next monster will be, people need to be aware of where they are as they are playing. There have been cases of people being mugged because their quest led them into some unsavoury areas. Remember, that your smartphone is a valuable object – so if you wouldn’t wave R15 000 in the air, don’t take out your phone either.

The game may be a fad, but for now, it is incredibly popular.  And if played responsibly it can be a fun and exciting activity for friends and even families. Don’t worry - you aren’t the only one not playing it. Just know that those people frantically swiping at their phones are trying to catch a computer monster and getting a lot of exercises doing so!

Just remember:  don’t do anything online that you would not do in the real world.