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Facebook Is Using Your Phone's Location To Suggest New Friends (fusion.net)
Fusion's Kashmir Hill is reporting that Facebook is using your phone's location to suggest new friends. It's unclear exactly when the social juggernaut began doing this, but a number of instances suggest it only started recently. From the report:Last week, I met a man who suspected Facebook had tracked his location to figure out who he was meeting with. He was a dad who had recently attended a gathering for suicidal teens. The next morning, he told me, he opened Facebook to find that one of the anonymous parents at the gathering popped up as a "person you may know." [...] "People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know," a Facebook spokesperson said. "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." One of those factors is smartphone location. A Facebook spokesperson said though that shared location alone would not result in a friend suggestion, saying that the two parents must have had something else in common, such as overlapping networks.While this feature could be useful in some cases, many may -- and they should -- see it as a big invasion of their privacy -- Hill has succinctly explained a number of them.
"The friend request is coming FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!"
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
You have to be creative in your paranoia if you want to stay on Facebook.
"Facebook is using your phone's location to suggest new friends."
How does it do that? I don't have a Facebook account, nor a Facebook app on my phone.
Just say "no" to the Bookface.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
uninstall the facebook app and use the browser instead
And I only sign on from VPNs.
Guess I'm in the minority.
Satan is holding a contest between Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle to see which company can be most evil. At present, unusually, Microsoft is trailing. Microsoft is not so much evil as just stupid.
This would be a great way to get to know the full identities of the other fun members of your AA group.
I noticed this a few months back. I noticed that I was getting a lot more friend suggestions of people that I didn't know, which was the first thing that made me curious. Facebook had always been suggesting that I friend people when I had mutual friends with that person, but suddenly it was suggesting that I friend people that I didn't recognize, and with whom I shared no mutual friends. So I started paying a bit more attention.
Then I noticed that, among the random strangers, there were a few people that I did know but did not have any mutual Facebook friends and hadn't checked in at the same locations or anything else. That was my first tip-off that Facebook was trying to do something clever to link up friends, so I scanned the suggestions again looking for a possible pattern. Then I noticed that some of the strangers looked familiar. It took me a second to place them, but they were people who lived in the same apartment building or worked in the same office building. In some cases, it was people who lived in a nearby apartment building and got coffee from the same place that I did.
They're definitely using location data to match people up. My only question is whether it's tracking your location all the time, only when the app is open, or only when you post.
do everything they want to.
I was thinking almost as nefariously. "Jarred wants to be your friend."
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It recommends also based on login IP. So you get your neighbors even though you have never met them.
Facebook Is Using Your Phone's Location To Suggest New Friends
That's a bold assertion. I'm aware of what runs on my phone. I have a kernel firewall installed to prevent unauthorized apps from talking to anything whatsoever, all the software I run is open source from fdroid, and I am astute enough not to install the "Facebook app", as well as to block FB IP ranges from both my desktop and mobile devices. So, I am confident it is not, in fact, doing anything of the sort.
Abandon Facebook or be revealed as an idiot.
Facebook does not care about your privacy, they only care about making money off of YOU and your very personal information.
Now that you know this, you must choose: Are you stupid, or are you smart? Smart people have already left Facebook behind. Don't you want to be smart?
Tell your freinds: Be smart, abandon Facebook TODAY.
I've been wondering why FB was suggesting so many agents as friends...
Be right back, someone's knocking at my door.
Facebook Is Using Your Phone's Location To Suggest New Friends
Facebook isn't using my phone to do anything. These shitty clickbait headlines are getting everywhere. Some of us are capable of being interested in things without having to have them directly linked to our own personal wellbeing.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It had to be in the last update to the iOS app on June 24th. I was very recently traveling with a group of people who all carried smartphones, but we never shared any information, photos or tagged each other. Basically, all communications were off the grid between us.
When I returned from my trip, several of the people from the group were in the "People you may know" section.
I assumed this was happening all along. This example, https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... A man found his mugger because they were both in the same place at the same time. I doubt they had any other friends in common. Lessson here is, if you want to be anonymous, disable location services and/or data services.
TFA even tells you how to turn off Facebook's ability to use your location data.
Choices. Knowledge. I believe it's still opt-in. Is it not?
For iOS, go into Settings >> FaceBook >> Settings, then set Share Location to "Never". Problem solved. While you're at it, disable Microphone and Camera access as well.
... and bitching about invasion of privacy is a little hypocritical.
Pose as terrorist.
Have phone with facebook app.
Attend whatever kind of gatherings they have to plot shit in which a bunch wear those masks.
Check new "you may know" listings.
Out them all to law enforcement.
There's a word for that...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I only turn on location access for the Facebook app (and my web browser) when I travel, so right now it thinks I'm about 2,200 miles away from where I actually am...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I don't know what you guys are rambling on about, I see an opportunity to not be swindled by those w4m "$ervice$". F*c*book, quit slacking and gimme my updated list of potential "friend$" already!
Neutral.. to matters that do not directly concern me
. . . I don't use Facebook
Last year I was dropping my daughter off at a friend's house. The friend's dad met me at the door and we chatted. It was the first time that we had ever talked about anything. Literally just met the guy. In our conversation, we mentioned an app that he just started using (and was in fact using when I pulled up). It's an app that I would never use since it was about Golf and I don't play or care about golf. Before I pulled out of his driveway I checked Facebook. I kid you not, an ad for that app was on my news feed. I'd never seen it before, ever. Somehow they correlated his installation of the app, with my account, and showed me something that there was a chance we discussed. Twilight Zone stuff, I tell you.
Monitor bandwidth usage on IIS6 in real-time: http://www.waetech.com/services/iisbm/
I use an app that puts out fake GPS data for other apps. They all think I hang out at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave all day.
This happened to me six years ago. I was in Singapore for a couple months on a business trip and started attending a local church. About a month after being there, Facebook had started suggesting new friends who were in Singapore. Some of the people it suggested were people I had met in Singapore. The people it recommended had no mutual friends with me.
Faceplatbook is horrible at guessing this shit. My now ex sister-in-law, when divorcing my brother, unfriended and blocked my family. Well guess who just showed up in my "suggested" friends. Her new husband. Some douche I've never met, will never meet and have absolutely no association with other than for about 12 months being friends on FB with his now current wife. She'll be divorced again in 12-24 months too. I'm closer friends with Kevin Bacon than this jackass.
Facebook just wants everyone to be connected to everyone, plain and simple. Share everything, hide nothing. That is their motto. If you are trying to be private on Facebook in any remote sense of the word, they are actively working against you. If you want any sort of privacy at all, do not have a FB account, period. Otherwise you've given it all up.
Facebook would have to be pretty retarded to NOT have this obvious feature. I'd be rather shocked if it wasn't added a very long time ago.
It's suggesting that I friend the creepy guy outside in the bushes...
I do not have Facebook or Facebook messenger apps installed, yet just an hour after I visited my barber for my monthly haircut he was suggested as a friend. We have 0 people in common & he only has about 35 friends to begin with.
I couldn't figure out how he was suggested (never seen him in my list before) until I read this article and now it is clear. Eff FB.
You are the product, not the customer when it comes to facebook.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
I'd like a friend in her 20s, maybe 30s, with big tits please?
-Styopa
Yet another reason I will never install their "Messenger" app on my phone
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Global distributor of public communique to USA/other nations' governments helps you find friends.
...is deny it access to my contacts. And fight the fight over and over, because they won't take 'no' for an answer for very long.
Along with some other privacy settings I keep having to remake. It's relentless, almost as bad as dealing with the U.S. Government.
And yes, I reinstall FB occasionally on my Android devices, giving them an opportunity to sneak in those settings again. I notice they've moved the 'Most Recent' choice of listings further and further down the line, trying to convince me to accept their idea of what I'm most interested at the moment. And they are wrong.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
My teenage daughter says nobody uses Facebook anymore anyway, since all their parents are on it now...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is my phone using its location to pick up underaged cheerleaders?? Dammit.
And,quite possibly coincidental at best, today's captcha: mating
I've got a patched facebook APK which gets rid of the location tracking crap, along with some other social crapware (and most ads). It's about one version old now, so it might nag you to update. The patches are a bitch to rebase, so I only do it every few versions. Warning- self-signed APK, so trust me at your own risk. http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~sm...
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I can't say I'm surprised by this.
Since I'm not interested in being notified every time someone messages me, I only access FB from a browser, even on my phone, and my browser does not have access to my location. This worked fine up until a couple of weeks ago when their mobile website stopped supporting messaging, instead popping up with a helpful advertisement to install the Facebook Messenger app.
I downloaded it for fun and looked at the list of permissions it asked for - it was taller than my screen. Much taller. Clearly they want access to everything.
Now I just use the Desktop version of the website.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Two parent who kids know each other are connected by Facebook? Never! It has to be something nefarious. Oh wait, no it doesn't. Their kids probably friended each other and Facebook said, "Hey, you probably know the parents of your kids' friends."
To the facebook AI get access to the unprotected CCTV cameras around the world and go full "samaritan"?
Facebook has been suggesting my neighbors as friends for a few years now, I assume it's suggesting based on gps proximity, and has been for quite a while.
Facebook: it looks like you are a low-life loiterer hanging outside of Tim Hortons all day long. Can I suggest you make better friends or find a job?
I can get behind that.
So basically, Facebook users are too stupid to pick their own friends, too stupid to find places to pick their own friends.
Makes sense Facebook, i agree with you.
On the other hand we will ignore how insulting it is to those who don't want any friends, aren't in the mood for making friends, or who make it a principle to make friends mainly as an extension of their existing circle (school, job, hobby) rather than having Facebook present randoms as if it knows better.
I simply love this.
Imagine being either a closeted person in a straight-laced community (or worse, a deeply bigoted country) or otherwise adventurous person and visiting for example a brothel, a gay sauna, bdsm dungeon or some other place that you really don't want to shout out about. Then imagine all those other people, some perhaps well-known for their indiscretionary characters, visiting the same place being connected to you. Potential stalkers, potential blabbers and if that's not bad enough - government surveillance connecting you to them.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future people would start leaving their phones home whenever they went out to do anything else except work or grocery shopping. Back to the age of landlines.
Why would you NOT turn off all location features on your smart (dumb as dog shit) phone as soon as you turned it on?
Seriously!? Do you really want anyone with an internet connection to be able to know everything about where you are, and when?
I've owned a total of four (4), yes that's correct 4, 'smart' phones in my entire life and in every case of turning it on for the first time ensured it was configured with geo-location features (faults) turned off.
Oh! And using a 'phone to cruise the webernet ??? WTF!! Do you not have a life?
Meetings like that might have to start requiring members to leave their phones at home to keep things private.
You know, you go to some event and have to endure some frikin' pedant whose a friend of a friend of a friend also - now you can never truly escape
Any site or app that uses the like button can track you. For example if you use an app like Untapped (used for beer lovers to keep track of beers they've tried) and enable GPS to use this app, since it's interface connects with Facebook, location data is shared with Facebook if you used the same email address to sign up for Untapped as you did for Facebook. Also if you shared your phone number with Facebook and use another app that interfaces with Facebook, the location data can be shared (if enabled) when you use this other app even if you uninstalled Facebook. I don't have any co-workers as Facebook friends but every time I log into Facebook most of the suggested friends that I may know are co-workers and we are not related in any way, didn't attend the same school, or had anything else in common other than we both work at for the same employer.
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