Facebook will share you location with businesses if you are near their stores
Everyone who uses Facebook knows that it is the worst when it comes to the FB users privacy. It has been at the brunt of attacks from privacy advocates for revealing important user data to its advertisers. Now it will go one step further and reveal your location to the businesses without your explicit consent.
Earlier this month, Facebook announced a new feature that will share your location with businesses when you’re near their stores. For this purpose, Facebook will use your geolocation data to find out what percentage of passersby have seen a brand’s ad, and to help stores custom-tailor their ads to promote more traffic to physical stores.
This feature called “local insights” tab will be available for free to any business with a Facebook page, though paid advertisers will get to see the share of people passing a store’s locations that have seen their ads.
The saving grace is that Facebook wont share your personal information and just your geo-location. However even then this feature feels awfully creepy and invasive to your privacy. This is especially so as a vast majority of Facebook users probably don’t even know such a feature actually exists.
Luckily for Facebook users you can protect yourself from Facebook’s prying eyes.
In the Facebook mobile app, click on the “More” tab, and then “Account Settings.” Then go to “Location Settings” and then turn of the toggle for location tracking.
