>Dollars to doughnuts they tried to use some internal-only API
Not at all necessary for this situation to occur. I just finished implementing a system (nothing to do with Pokemon) that also requests permission from external sites in a similar way. The mechanics for doing this are fiddly and checking this is actually set up correctly is likely well down the priority list provided things at least appear to work.
It is entirely possible that someone who had never done it before set it up in a hurry then everyone in the dev team just blindly clicked through without ever properly reading what was being requested because they were all in a rush to finish their stuff.
Not at all necessary for this situation to occur. I just finished implementing a system (nothing to do with Pokemon) that also requests permission from external sites in a similar way. The mechanics for doing this are fiddly and checking this is actually set up correctly is likely well down the priority list provided things at least appear to work.
It is entirely possible that someone who had never done it before set it up in a hurry then everyone in the dev team just blindly clicked through without ever properly reading what was being requested because they were all in a rush to finish their stuff.