Facebook is tracking your phone's location and using it to recommend friends
Reuters
The publication made the claim after talking to an unnamed source that attended an anonymous parents meeting for suicidal teens, only to be shown one of the parents in his Facebook friend suggestions the next day.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Fusion that the social media platform does look at your location data when making friend suggestions. However, they added that Facebook does not recommend friends purely because you happen to have been within the same vicinity them, adding that there needs to be another overlapping factor before this would happen.
"People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know," the Facebook spokesperson told Fusion. "We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you're part of, contacts you've imported and many other factors."
They added: "Location information by itself doesn't indicate that two people might be friends. That's why location is only one of the factors we use to suggest people you may know."
People may be alarmed to learn that Facebook is tracking their location data in this way, particularly if Facebook is recommending you make friends with people you meet in hospitals, rehabilitation centres, or other destinations where you assume you have a degree of anonymity.
Those who don't want Facebook to use their location data can turn it off by going into the settings on the Facebook app.
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- Markets rebound in early trade amid global rally, buying in ICICI Bank and Reliance
- Women in Leadership
- Rupee declines 5 paise to 83.43 against US dollar in early trade
- Election Commission issues notification for sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls
- 6 Coffee recipes you should try this summer