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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!
uninstall the facebook app and use the browser instead
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.
The story is addressing the sheep.
There, FTFY.
Your comment says a lot about your age. Fact is most people are not on Facebook. Facebook membership has levelled off. Young people don't feel the need to have Facebook account as the 25-45 age group. There are much better way of staying in contact with your friends. Sharing through Facebook is actually dropping. They've already acknowledge it. That's why they're getting desperate with those friends add hoping people start sharing again.
... and bitching about invasion of privacy is a little hypocritical.
Your comment says a lot about your age. Fact is most people are not on Facebook.
If we're talking about the United States and Canada... you're wrong. The population of the United States and Canada is 357 million people. According to this site, 222 million people in the United States and Canada use Facebook. Even subtracting for some people having two or more accounts-- apparently, most people in the US and Canada are on Facebook.
http://www.statista.com/statis...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm part of the 7% I have an account under a fake name
I used to have two accounts until someone decided ikatefacebork was not my real name and Facebook demanded to see my photo id.
Haven't had to use the other account in years the only reason I had one in the first place was to deal with companies that CBA to have their own login system.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Abandon? Please. Be creative, start trolling!
There is one thing an statistician fears more than having no data: Having poisoned data. Data where it is impossible to tell whether the data you have is real or fake, and what information is good and which is bogus. Because having little data means you at least have a little bit of data. Having poisoned data means you have no data at all to work with.
Poison the data well and watch the empire crumble.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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
While technically true, how many of those accounts are abandoned? My daughter, for instance, has all but left Facebook for other social platforms. She still technically has an account, but mostly ignores it. Same for most of her social circle. Yes I know anecdote data, but there have been a number of reports the last few years of some people drifting away from Facebook.
I'f you have an unrooted android phone with Facebook as one of the irremoveable bloatwares, it collects information in the background and transmits regularly despite you never having opened it, or signed in
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
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/
My daughter, for instance, has all but left Facebook for other social platforms. She still technically has an account, but mostly ignores it.
She still has an account, but is the app still installed on her phone? If so, then I bet she's still being tracked and could be shown as a suggested friend to others.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Never have been, no intention of joining that or any other social media at this point.
i"m thinking of perhaps doing twitter or something for a business venture I'm thinking of, but ONLY if I can create a business only account and now have to have a personal account.
This article is yet ANOTHER reason NOT to be on Facebook.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
But incapable of not commenting to that effect. Now hold up, I need to go tell someone I don't have a TV.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
If you're organizing groups, do respect the privacy of those whom you invite as well, and consider other options or provide an alternative. The group membership roll alone is potentially very interesting information to FaceBooks "valued partners". And forcing people to sign up for FB in order to join is just plain wrong.
FaceBook is trying that crap on a large scale with its single sign-on feature. Luckily I have not come across many sites yet that actually use the feature, let alone have it as the only means to sign up.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...