Costa Rica is so enthralled with Pokemon GO, the latest mobile app by Nintendo and Niantic, that smartphone users are going online to research the game more so than they are viewing pornography.

A few days ago, a news report filed by Cory McNutt of Android Headlines indicated that 4.6 percent of compatible Android devices in Costa Rica had installed Pokemon GO, the highest rate in Latin America. Moreover, national newspaper La Nacion recently reported that Internet searches for the augmented reality game were the second-most queried term in Costa Rica, far above searches for online porn, according to Google Trends. Only the Kingdom of The Netherlands reports more Pokemon GO searches than Costa Rica on a national level.

Unfortunately, hackers and online scammers are taken advantage of the Pokemon GO craze to dupe unsuspecting users into visiting porn sites. According to a cyber threat warning issued by Internet security firm ESET, fake mobile apps such as Pokemon GO Ultimate have popped up on the Google Play marketplace.

ESET Mobile Security warns that an installation of Pokemon GO ultimate would result in a frozen screen upon execution. Frustrated users must perform a hard restart on their devices; the malicious app will continue to run in the background, sometimes directing users to porn websites on their mobile browsers.

As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star:

Although the Pokemon GO mobile app has not been formally released in Costa Rica, gamers are finding way to install the new game on their iPhones and Android-powered devices. Users in Costa Rica have been installing the free app by means of proxies or other strategies that change the geographical region of their mobile devices. Sideloading is another option that bypasses the iTunes App Store or the Google Play digital marketplace.

Thus far, Pokemon in Costa Rica have been appearing in odd places. Nighttime photos posted to the Facebook Timeline of LigaPokemonCR show players who have captured creatures outside of La Pantera Rosa (the Pink Panther,) an erotic strip club located in the sketchy southeastern corner of downtown San Jose.