Can you ban something you never had? Pokémon Go hasn’t gotten an official release in most countries yet, and that includes Iran. Sounds like they’ll never have a chance to launch there, either — the country’s government has banned the game completely, citing security concerns.

Like in most other places, those security concerns haven’t been specified. We’ve heard rumblings about security concerns with Pokémon Go before, but they turned out to be overblown at most. Pokémon Go probably isn’t any more security concerning than any other app that has access to your location data, which is a lot of them. If you’re worried about Pokémon Go being used to track your location, it’s just the latest in a long line of apps to do that.

The ban, which was handed down by the country’s High Council of Virtual Spaces, is the first such nationwide ban specifically applied to Pokémon Go. While the game hadn’t been released in the country, it’s still been possible to install the app through other means like sideloading, which involves acquiring the app’s installation files outside of the Google Play store — usually from unverified sources, which, funny enough, represents the greatest security flaw there is with Pokémon Go (or any Android app). Presumably, the ban applies to sideloading Pokémon Go as well.

Via BBC