The insanely popular Pokémon Go is collecting users’ data and sharing it with anonymous third parties, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota said in a letter to the company’s CEO on Tuesday.

The lawmaker wrote a letter to Niantic Inc’s John Hanke on Tuesday with a list of demands for further information regarding the app’s privacy settings.

“I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent,” he wrote.

Franken, who sits on the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law, accused the company of collecting users’ information and potentially sharing it with third-party service providers. He highlighted that most users are children and the app’s default setting is to automatically collect data, with users having to specifically “opt-out”.

The senator made seven requests for additional information, such as a list of the “third-party service providers” that Niantic shares information with and their reasons for doing so.

The app was immediately controversial because it asked new users to provide “all access” to their Google accounts. It later became clear that this was simply clumsy wording and the app only had limited access to password information.

Pokémon Go has become a global phenomenon since its release last week. The augmented reality app has been downloaded 7.5m times and boosted Nintendo’s shares by 53%, adding $7bn to its market value.

Franken, a former comedian on Saturday Night Live, gave Hanke until 12 August to respond to his request.