Facebook Messenger Shares Your Location With Every Message
May 28, 2015 | Technology
You’re probably aware that Facebook collects a lot of information about you, and if you’re using the mobile Messenger app, that includes your location data as well.
A new Chrome extension called Marauders Map lets anyone you’ve sent a message see that location information all at once.
By default, the mobile Messenger app logs your location in every message (you can tell if it’s on if the GPS icon next to the text box is blue). Even if you’re not actively choosing to send your location, it’s embedded in the message itself.
Open up the Messenger app right now and tap on a message from someone else. There’s a good chance you’ll get a map with the location they send that message from.
As the creator of the Marauders Map extension points out, the extension allows you to see all that collected information at once to make it easy to track everywhere they have been. Thankfully, it’s easy to turn off this creepy feature:
On Android:
- Tap the menu icon > Settings > Location Services
- Uncheck the box that enables location services
On iOS:
- Head into Settings > Location Services
- Fine Facebook Messenger on the list and set the location option to off
That should prevent Messenger from sending your location with future messages, but won’t delete old location info, so keep that in mind. If someone used the extension mentioned above, they’d still be able to track your previous locations pretty easily.
What’s The Problem?
We still find Facebook Messenger extremely useful and use it religiously, albeit with location sharing turned off. This may lead you to wonder if there really is a problem here, since there is always option to not share your exact coordinates with messages. However, everyone I have shown this extension to has been anywhere from surprised to appalled that this much of their very personal data is online for their friends (and even complete strangers) to access. So it is seems that there is an issue.
Let’s start at the root of the problem: Why do so many people give up their location data so readily on Messenger?
The main problem is that every time you open your phone and send a single message it’s so easy to forget about your location data being attached to it. Furthermore, it seems so harmless to attach a location with a single message, but the problem is over time the information from these messages adds up.
Both of these issues in some way stem from the fact that locations are not only included by default, but also are rather subtly placed in the UI. The power of defaults on human behavior is well documented in psychology and suggests that few people will put in the effort to deviate from the default action of sharing. Furthermore, because there are no readily visible consequences to sharing your location, users are never incentivized to devote attention to what this default of sharing is actually revealing about them.
The creator of Marauders Map said he decided to write this extension, because we are constantly being told how we are losing privacy with the increasing digitization of our lives, however the consequences never seem tangible. With this code you can see for yourself the potentially invasive usage of the information you share, and decide for yourself if this is something you should worry about.
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