New Facebook app to track offline users..delete Facebook now
http://rt.com/news/facebook-app-track-location-510/
Those concerned about Facebook’s controversial privacy policies may have yet another reason to worry. The social network is reportedly developing a smartphone application which will track the location of its users – even when the app isn’t running.
The app is scheduled to be released in mid-March, two anonymous sources told Bloomberg.
It’s allegedly designed to help users find nearby friends by revealing those friends’ locations. But unlike Facebook’s current mobile app, which allows users to let others know where they are by “checking in” at a location, the new app would continuously follow the user once the program is activated.
The app would track user whereabouts in the “background” of Apple’s mobile operating system – even when the app isn’t open on the phone, one of the sources said. It remains unclear whether the app will run on other platforms.
It’s a technique that would likely require the social networking site to ask permission from users. But there’s a loophole – Facebook may have already gotten consent from its users to run the feature.
The app may fall under Facebook’s data policy – which tells users that a company may use location information “to tell you and your friends about people or events nearby, or to offer deals to you that you might be interested in.”
“When we get your GPS location, we put it together with other location information we have about you (like your current city)…but we only keep it until it is no longer useful to provide you services, like keeping your last GPS coordinates to send you relevant notifications,” the data use policy says.
The app isn’t drastically different from current applications, such as Apple’s “Find My Friends” and Math Camp Inc.’s “Highlight,” which constantly track user locations to help people find friends or places of interest.
When approached by Bloomberg to speak about the tracking application, Facebook Spokesman Derick Mains declined to comment.
Based on past precedents, the new app is bound to raise concern from users who value their privacy.
Facebook is no stranger to controversy surrounding its privacy settings. The site has already been under fire from US and European regulators, who claim it doesn’t do enough to keep user data private.
In early January, the EU pressured internet giants such as Facebook to boost personal security controls and limit the collection of data without users’ consent.
Last September, the site was forced to stop using its facial recognition software in Europe following an investigation by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland.
And now, the social network’s new “Graph Search” system – which is waiting to be tested – is raising red flags.
The system is designed to search Facebook for very specific information, such as ‘Friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter’ and ‘Languages my friends speak.’
But after using the system, computer programmer and ‘Gadget Geek’ Tom Scott found the program can conduct much juicier searches.
For instance, it will easily find ‘Married people, who like prostitutes’ or ‘Current employers of people who like racism,’ Scott revealed in a blogpost.
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who needs a chip in their body when you can have a facebook account?..incredible what the sheeple public will allow now in their lives..total anonymity is gone and your tracked and recorded with your consent..
401
Oh people will still use it. I don’t get the point of Facebook anyway. They KNOW nothing on there is private. Even when you sign up, it shows where you are at. You can’t change that, and says you are somewhere else, it tracks your IP. I heard that when people post from their smart phones it will say “Posted from (Location here)”
Yeah who needs a chip in their body when Facebook can do it for you?
I hope one day society walks away from the social networking thing. Yeah the internet is great, it’s wonderful to read uncensored news, and we have great people like you who post the real deals, but the social networking and all these gadgets are pushing us further and further apart as humans. Teenagers need to put facebook down and the texting and just pick up the phone and talk to each other. It seems real human interaction, humans doing real things with each other is constantly being replaced by a virtual reality.
And in the Facebook can sell everything about you to some companies that want the info. They took MySpace to a whole new level with Facebook. And to even think, the people went from MySpace to Facebook so they could all look the same and not be able to edit their profiles or use hack codes at all, or post blogs should tell you something. They traded all that you could do on the old myspace from 2007 just so they could sit there and “Like” everything to feed their egos. I really don’t see the point in Facebook over that. if I am going to have a profile, at least let me hack the layout like on Myspace or something. On Facebook it’s basically like everyone is robots. They post like them too. When they talk about narcissism running rampant in society, look no further than Facebook. I mean it is the breeding grounds of Narcissism. Look at my pictures, look at my house, look at where I am, look at my life. Where else can you expose everything about yourself like a prancing peacock and get your 15 minutes of fame every minute?
Shit like Facebook is only making people more self centered. Gone is the “I’m going to do something for my friend” and it’s replaced with “it’s all about me me me me” and those idiots don’t even get it that Mark Zuckerberg is just selling all their info to private companies and the FBI is watching. What idiots. What site changes their privacy totally if they are about protecting you? The sheeple will never get it, never.
“Shit like Facebook is only making people more self centered. Gone is the “I’m going to do something for my friend” and it’s replaced with “it’s all about me me me me” and those idiots don’t even get it that Mark Zuckerberg is just selling all their info to private companies and the FBI is watching. What idiots. What site changes their privacy totally if they are about protecting you? The sheeple will never get it, never.”
thats the truth there..one big data mining program..straight out of harvard..what a surprise..
It’s not the ones that use it you gotta worry about.. it’s the suddenly/slowly inactive ones to the ones that delete =O… how dare they stop updating the world about their life!!!!
lol
remove that deadwood!
Hahahaha how dare them yes. It’s just depressing how “weird” it is to delete a facebook account. My friend deleted hers the other day, and she couldn’t even find the delete account option for over an hour. It seems like they don’t want you to leave AT ALL.
What I love is how the reactions are. “Why did you delete your Facebook account?”. That’s really the whole problem with Facebook. It should have never been accepted as a piece of your lifestyle. And listening to the excuses people come up with “I have a Facebook to stay in contact with family and friends” OK how did you stay in contact with them before Facebook existed? People blindly follow the leader just so they can fit in with the gang.
Even when deleted the information you gave up remains online.