Facebook has admitted that it tracks your location even if you block it

Last year there were reports in the media that the social network Facebook can track the location of its users even if they have disabled it in the location services settings of their mobile phones. Facebook has now confirmed that this was indeed the case. Her representatives did so in a letter addressed to Senators Christopher A. Coons and Josh Hawley.

According to its representatives, Facebook uses three different methods to track the locations of its users, only one of which uses location services. Among other things, the aforementioned letter states that Facebook also had access to the activity of its users. Even if the user in question does not activate location services, Facebook can nevertheless obtain data about his location based on information provided to the social network by its users through activities and connections to individual services.

In practice, it seems that if the given user reacts to a Facebook event about a music festival, uploads a location-marked video to his profile, or is marked by his Facebook friends in a post with a given location, Facebook obtains information about the probable location of the person in this way. In turn, Facebook can obtain approximate data about the user's residence based on the address entered in the profile or the location in the Marketplace service. Another way to get information about the user's approximate location is to find out his IP address, although this method is quite imprecise.

The reason for determining the location of users is allegedly an effort to target advertisements and sponsored posts as best and as accurately as possible, but the aforementioned senators sharply criticize Facebook's statement. Coons called Facebook's efforts "inadequate and even misguided." "Facebook claims that users have full control over their own privacy, but in reality it doesn't even give them the ability to stop it from collecting and monetizing their location data," stated Hawley condemned Facebook's actions in one of his Twitter posts, where he said, among other things, that Congress should finally step in.

Facebook isn't the only company struggling with non-transparent location tracking - not too long ago it was revealed that the iPhone 11, for example, was tracking users' location even if the user turned off location services. But Apple in this case he explained everything and promised to make amends.

Source: 9to5Mac