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Turning Off Facebook Location Tracking Doesn't Stop It From Tracking Your Location (gizmodo.com)
Even if you explicitly tell Facebook to not track your location, it says it will still use your IP address to track your location. Kashmir Hill, reporting for Gizmodo: Aleksandra Korolova has turned off Facebook's access to her location in every way that she can. She has turned off location history in the Facebook app and told her iPhone that she "Never" wants the app to get her location. She doesn't "check-in" to places and doesn't list her current city on her profile.
Despite all this, she constantly sees location-based ads on Facebook. She sees ads targeted at "people who live near Santa Monica" (where she lives) and at "people who live or were recently near Los Angeles" (where she works as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California). When she traveled to Glacier National Park, she saw an ad for activities in Montana, and when she went on a work trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts, she saw an ad for a ceramics school there. Facebook was continuing to track Korolova's location for ads despite her signaling in all the ways that she could that she didn't want Facebook doing that.
[...] "There is no way for people to opt out of using location for ads entirely," said a Facebook spokesperson by email. "We use city and zip level location which we collect from IP addresses and other information such as check-ins and current city from your profile to ensure we are providing people with a good service -- from ensuring they see Facebook in the right language, to making sure that they are shown nearby events and ads for businesses that are local to them."
Despite all this, she constantly sees location-based ads on Facebook. She sees ads targeted at "people who live near Santa Monica" (where she lives) and at "people who live or were recently near Los Angeles" (where she works as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California). When she traveled to Glacier National Park, she saw an ad for activities in Montana, and when she went on a work trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts, she saw an ad for a ceramics school there. Facebook was continuing to track Korolova's location for ads despite her signaling in all the ways that she could that she didn't want Facebook doing that.
[...] "There is no way for people to opt out of using location for ads entirely," said a Facebook spokesperson by email. "We use city and zip level location which we collect from IP addresses and other information such as check-ins and current city from your profile to ensure we are providing people with a good service -- from ensuring they see Facebook in the right language, to making sure that they are shown nearby events and ads for businesses that are local to them."
Apps that aren't installed have an even harder time tracking you.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Facebook has entered agreements with most if not all the major cellular carriers and phone manufacturers to pre-install the Facebook app on your phone. You can't uninstall it. You can disable it, but I've been fighting another preinstalled app called Facebook App Manager which you can't disable. It seems to be re-enabling the Facebook app (every week or so it's active again and has auto-updated to the latest version). I'd been putting off rooting the phone since it voids the warranty, but I think I'm going to have to punt the warranty and root just to kill stupid crap like this.
Facebook is well known for tracking you even if you don't have a Facebook account. Those little 'f' icons you see on websites? They're not an icon; they contain a script which gathers info to uniquely identify your browser, then reports which page you visited back to the mothership. They create a ghost profile for you, then link it to your real identity if they ever get corroborating evidence (e.g. friend sends you a link to their FB page to your email, thus linking your email address with the ghost profile). And if your friend has tagged pictures they took of you, they know what you look like. And now with their app reporting your movements, they know where you live and work and like to hang out. All without you ever creating a Facebook account. I'm approaching the opinion that the only way to deal with them is to nuke them from orbit.