Technology

Facebook Messenger Sends Out ‘Creepily’ Precise Location Data

Published

11 years ago

May 28, 2015

Every time a person sends a Facebook message from a phone, it sends out their location to the person chatting with them. The extensions scrapes all of that data and overlays it on a map, meaning that a precise chart of people’s movements can be done using those conversations.

The creator of the extension, Aran Khanna, said that he had made it to demonstrate the creepiness of the information that people might be unwittingly sharing.

Some of the data sent out makes it possible to pinpoint locations to less than a meter, he said, and that can be used to figure out people’s regular schedule or to spy on them. Khanna points out that it doesn’t take many messages to work out people’s habits, especially if a number of people collude to share their data.