Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

https://medium.com/@arankhanna/stalking-your-friends-with-facebook-messenger-9da8820bd27d

by dvdyzag • 11 years ago

391 185 11 years ago

kanche2• 11 years ago

The location you share with your friend is dead accurate, not an area but the exact gps point in map. I did not realize I was sharing location when the feature was first announced -- told a friend I am just five minutes away from his house: he replied no you aren't -- found this feature and switched it off for good at that moment, it's intimidating.

nodata2• 11 years ago

Or maybe not lie?

hiamnew• 11 years ago

Small lies like that are a huge part of everyday communications. No one should feel overly guilty about them and we need to be able to make them. They can be a kind of courtesy.

darklajid4• 11 years ago

That's unrelated.

Sharing _exact_ locations by default without realizing it is creepy/intimidating. The content of the message/the incident itself is just an anecdote that explains how the GP noticed this idiotic behavior of FB's chat.

Commenting on the anecdote derails the thread as far as I'm concerned. The subject is 'FB shares detailed location data and you might not know it', not 'one time, in band camp, I lied to a friend about my ETA'.

Ignoring that, there's no way to judge his communication with a friend. The only two people that can decide whether a lie like that is acceptable are the people involved. The friend might be offended and agree with you. Or laugh about it and ask for a beer in return, being totally fine with it. Expecting it? Who knows. And still irrelevant.

We can blame HN for being unable to hide subthreads, but for now the first 2 pages on my 25" monitor discuss if lies are acceptable or not and in what circumstances..

rainingtomorrow• 11 years ago

That's a good example of how faulty "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about" argument is.

dspillett• 11 years ago

It may not have been a lie. It could simply have been a bad estimate, maybe he guessed he was about five minutes away but didn't know the area too well and was more then ten minutes away?

calcsam• 11 years ago

This is really, really bad for people in abusive relationships.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

Being in an abusive relationship is bad for people.

Flimm• 11 years ago

Is my relationship with Facebook an abusive relationship? Only tongue-in-cheek.

monkeyprojects2• 11 years ago

Yep, but its not easy to escape from abuse. Until people accept they are being abused they will deny it.

kosei2• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what value add this serves as an opt-out solution rather than opt-in. For people who have a strong desire to show their location, sure. But what possible reason could Facebook have to make this readily accessible to anyone you chat with on an opt-out only basis?

rtpg2• 11 years ago

"where are you?" "when will you show up?" "you back home yet?"

A lot of these things are questions I routinely get/ask in things like messenger. People with location on usually help us to coordinate things and the like.

izacus• 11 years ago

But that doesn't really answer the question of why sending your location to everyone BY DEFAULT is a good idea.

hug• 11 years ago

Google Hangouts solves this problem in a much more sane way -- Whenever my girlfriend sends me "where are you?" on hangouts, the application prompts me to send a map pin.

This solution probably isn't particularly novel, but it's probably better than carte blanche location access, in the opinion of most people.

lucaspiller• 11 years ago

I'm guessing it's advertising / marketing related. Maybe they aren't doing anything yet with the data, but I'm sure the terms and conditions allow them to do whatever they want with it in the future. Being able to stalk your friends is how they make people willing to give them the data.

kosei2• 11 years ago

Here's the thing, though: they absolutely could do that without the user knowing (I'm sure plenty of companies do). By showing the location information to everyone, it makes this much more readily apparent to users and gives individual users way more information than is necessary. If Facebook wanted to get your location data through Messenger, they absolutely could do that fairly easily without notifying all of your friends of your whereabouts with every message.

Honestly, and maybe I'm in the minority, showing that information readily to my friends is MORE of a red flag than if Facebook solely had that data. Because let's be honest... they already have that data from my usage on the FB app (albeit at a lower frequency).

felipeerias• 11 years ago

The banality of evil: they got so used to tracking the exact location of their users at all times, and sharing that information with advertisers, that they didn't realise that it might not be a good idea to systematically leak it to other people.

arbitrage• 11 years ago

Oh, I'm sure they knew what they were doing. They just don't care if it's a good idea for you. It's a great idea for them and their partners.

pdkl952• 11 years ago

They could give the user a button or something to send their location into to whomever they are currently chatting with (to one person in person-to-person chat, or to the group in multi-user chat. This would give the user complete control over their data while still allowing most of the utility.

Of course, this wouldn't give facebook a detailed map of their user's movements.

LLWM3• 11 years ago

As long as you don't manually revoke the app's permission to know about your location after you send it, what would stop them from building that map?

com2kid• 11 years ago

The funny part is why Facebook sends the exact GPS coordinates. All the end users see if a rough estimate, typically the city name.

rand3342• 11 years ago

And then you remember where Facebook's initial funding sources came from....

janpieterz2• 11 years ago

Which funding do you mean? They seem to be quite normal, open companies and people with interest in these kind of startups. For people interested in this [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Initial_fun...

personlurking2• 11 years ago

I believe rand334 is referring to the video below, regarding US government connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGdWsxHJlM

butwhy2• 11 years ago

Feature request: auto-click-on every conversation you've had in messenger when you navigate to /messages so you don't need to do it manually. Considering it doesn't persist past a reload...

praseodym• 11 years ago

There's a setting in Messenger to disable it for all chats. And on iOS, just disable location services for Messenger.

butwhy2• 11 years ago

I don't think you understand my comment. I don't want to disable it.

arankhanna• 11 years ago

I actually didn't want this to be used as a tool to "auto-stalk" your friends so I didn't add features such as this one (however feel free to fork the code and add it yourself)

zatkin• 11 years ago

Hopefully Facebook doesn't treat you differently based on this article. Good luck with your internship!

ncr100• 11 years ago

Thinking the same thing here.

Loque• 11 years ago

I'd say he is an awesome hire! Interested and able, also with seemingly a good understand of privacy and social location data. Handling GEO data for individuals is very very tricky.

dep_b• 11 years ago

You cannot only detect with 90% accuracy where they are but also with 90% accuracy that they're running Android.

orthoganol• 11 years ago

I find it hard to grasp why any intelligent individual who knows what goes on with Facebook would still voluntarily remain on Facebook.

"Ah but the social ostracization!", seemingly the main reason why otherwise intelligent, informed people do stay on Facebook, just doesn't hold up anymore, as too many cool, socially active 20-somethings I know or are acquainted with have moved off of Facebook, mostly in last 1-2 years. Even if you're stuck in a gossipy friend group that would "severely judge you" for leaving Facebook, which is more likely in your own head than in reality, then that's probably a sign you need to find more down to earth friends.

e12e• 11 years ago

It's the network effect. There are no other good ways to keep casually in touch with people from 100+ countries that I know of. Sure, people you can just go and have a coffee with isn't a problem, but those you have to fly 4+ hours to see are a different matter.

These 20-somethings - they're also moving off of Google properties? Or is it just facebook data you're concerned about?

Osmium• 11 years ago

then that's probably a sign you need to find more down to earth friends.

No faster way to get people to agree with you than to insult their friends ;)

I use Facebook, and I consider myself very privacy conscious. How do I reconcile that? I decide what I want to share (very little) and only log in occasionally, for the odd update. It's a pragmatic view and a reasonable one. I don't feel the need to cut myself off from a convenient social resource on principle alone. I have to make decisions on what personal details I share about myself all day, every day (such as commenting here, for example)–Facebook is just another example of that.

I agree that lack of user knowledge (and, therefore, consent) with location information on messages is worrying though, and should be addressed.

wololongong• 11 years ago

I live in a different country to almost all of my friends and family. Facebook is how we stay in touch. Some of my friends don't check their emails on a regular basis and don't use Google Hangouts. Facebook is incredibly useful for people in my position.

okatsu• 11 years ago

I'm glad the 20-somethings in your circle haved moved off of Facebook, but mine haven't, including my girlfriend. I'm just not willing to be the one guy always insisting we IM on something else. I might get rid of it upon graduation but until then it's the de facto communication tool and it's not worth the hassle to fight this.

WillHuxtable• 11 years ago

I came to the conclusion that I should leave Facebook quite a while ago now. However, almost all of my friends have and constantly use Facebook, and it remains almost their sole method of contacting me. My friend group and I are all around 16, so that likely explains things.

Nexxxeh2• 11 years ago

I'm not sure. Aren't teenagers supposed to be the demographic most likely to change networks?

There is an element of inertia and of being held hostage though. Why go through the hassle of everyone changing networks of Facebook still works? And no-one can leave on their own...

socket02• 11 years ago

I like to think that I'm "any intelligent individual", and I use Facebook. That's where some close friends and family are, and if I want to keep in contact with them, that's where I need to be.

I understand the nature of the data Facebook collects about me, and I understand what they would like to do with that data. They want to know who I am, what makes me tick, and use that knowledge to show me advertising I'm more likely to click on. They also want to draw me into their walled garden by promising me shiny things if I stay. It doesn't really work, because I see the same middle of the road content and advertising shown to my friends and family.

I also share my location on Messenger, although the friends and family I chat to might or might not be interested in where I am. I don't chat to strangers, or even "strangers". And if I'm somewhere people don't need to know about, I don't share my location. These are things we teach children about using the Net, or should be. Adults should be able to figure this out themselves.

And I explain the difference between myself and my devices to people; when Facebook tells them I'm at home, that's where my phone or tablet or desktop PC is connecting from. I might be there, I might be away, I might not even be awake.

The technology lies, and sometimes so do I.

dublinben3• 11 years ago

if I want to keep in contact with them, that's where I need to be

As an intelligent individual, you must recognize that this isn't really true. You were able to communicate with your family and friends before Facebook existed. You can still communicate with them now, over other media like email, telephone, etc. You (and many others) are simply choosing to use a hostile platform to stay in touch because it is 'easier' or 'more popular' than the alternatives.

philh• 11 years ago

It's not necessarily about gossip and judgment. Consider two different kinds of friendship groups. There are small, close-knit ones, where everyone is friends with everyone, and everyone wants Alice to be there. And there are large, loose ones, where if Alice doesn't show up, nobody might even notice.

In the first case, if Alice isn't on facebook, they might make plans on facebook and someone will say "cool, I'll let Alice know". In the second case, they might make plans on facebook and nobody will think to do that. Her closer friends might - but her closer friends might not even be going, and that doesn't mean she doesn't want to go.

darklajid4• 11 years ago

That's a rather harsh argument and we could (not trying to derail this) proceed and say the same thing about people that use Google products, Twitter, WhatsApp, 'the cloud' etc. - and in the end we'll finally agree with Stallman.

I don't have a Facebook account and have to admit that I never truly understood the benefit, the appeal. It seemed full of ads, games, random pictures and without structure - i.e. you might read about people ranting about the current soccer game (I hate that), but miss an important update from a close friend.

Plus, as soon as email isn't a suitable format to exchange information, I have the impression that the communication is either too broad (shout to the public) or trivial (one liners about nonsense). I don't get it.

I DO get the network effect though. So while I agree with you that the 'why' might be hard to grasp, I don't like the stab at people's intellect. It doesn't matter if an individual is intelligent or not - not using a service that all your peers decided on using is hard.

Your last line about being severely judged by friends especially doesn't sit well with me.

For one, people might not judge you - they just might communicate less with you, forget you at times (because you're the one person that needs a mail or a text message or whatever).

And then there's the ridiculous 'find different friends' part. Seriously…

lmm4• 11 years ago

Plus, as soon as email isn't a suitable format to exchange information, I have the impression that the communication is either too broad (shout to the public) or trivial (one liners about nonsense). I don't get it.

What do you do when you want to organize a party/group trip to a concert/etc. and invite several people?

* Email and reply-all? This means you annoy people who can't make it (they keep seeing all the replies), and people who are added to the list have to be re-added several times as people reply-all to old messages and leave them out.

* Create a mailman list for this specific event and require people to unsubscribe/resubscribe? That's a lot of overhead, and the UI is awful.

* Set up a website/blog for this one event? Even more overhead.

And none of the above approaches have decent calendaring integration - you can attach a .ics to an email but it's still a very manual process.

falcolas• 11 years ago

and in the end we'll finally agree with Stallman

And that's a bad thing? If your friends get this much information out of messages you're sending them, how much does Facebook have? An individual employee at Facebook? An individual who compromises Facebook's servers? An advertiser who works with Facebook?

Agreeing with Stallman is a good way to start taking back control of what information is available out there about you - assuming that matters to you.

sixothree• 11 years ago

I am finding more and more that people who post on facebook feel like they've gone out of their way to inform you of something. Excluding yourself from facebook means excluding yourself from the events in their life.

gedrap• 11 years ago

I believe all of us here are with some intelligent. Therefore, we all know what facebook collects about us. So everyone makes a decision to use it or not. Plain and simple.

I don't agree with statements such as 'hard to grasp why any intelligent individual [uses it]'. If that's your opinion then great but not everyone should have the same opinion.

Nexxxeh2• 11 years ago

OP's inability to grasp something is entirely their problem, not Facebook's. I object when privacy is taken from me. I will, however, give up a degree of privacy in exchange for convenience. That is informed consent.

If one's news feed is full of gossipy rubbish and stuff they aren't interested in, then one either need to learn how to customise one's feed (easy) or get better friends. Facebook make it pretty damn easy to do the former.

Facebook is a content sharing platform and one's friends are making the content. If the content is rubbish, that says more about the people involved than it says about Facebook.

nl4• 11 years ago

This is a genuine question: why does not caring that Facebook collects that data make me less intelligent?

Edit: Judging from the downvotes, asking this question is quite unpopular. Whilst I understand this opinion is unpopular I remain unconvinced it is less intelligent.

stephengillie2• 11 years ago

Just like getting a prenuptial agreement - don't worry about it if you don't plan on doing anything with your life.

It's easy to forget - but the information they collect can be used by the group that collects it, and by other parties (Gov't TLAs, hackers, insurance companies, banks, business associates, contractors, partner companies). This can happen now, or at some point in the future.

The data can be combined with other data, such as the National Insurance Database (which is illegal to publicly discuss), to draw conclusions about yourself - possibly based on untrue assumptions.

Master Data programs/systems/initiatives are consolidating, de-duping, and integrating data from disparate systems. It doesn't matter that you put down a fake address 100 times, you just have to put in a real address one time - these systems can collate all the data, validate each one against the USPS database, and toss the fakes.

mintplant• 11 years ago

Friend groups that use Facebook Messenger pretty much exclusively to stay in contact. Leaving it behind would mean losing touch, missing out on plans, etc.

thearn4• 11 years ago

At this point, I'm just on FB to keep up with family, and to share baby photos. Basically, a kind of glorified white pages.

eertami• 11 years ago

What are the downsides to using Facebook as a communication tool? I have: a fake email, a fake name, no mobile number attached and I don't post statuses.

Facebook groups and messages however are just so incredibly convenient and ubiquitous that you won't be able to convince entirely separate groups of people to leave and use a service you mandate - unless you are friends with solely technical people.

Could I be a member of the groups and organizations I am without being in the Facebook groups? Sure - but it would inconvenience everyone, if there's a discussion in a group, and someone tags me to get my opinion on something, I can fire back a reply. They don't have to call or email me separately.

psykovsky3• 11 years ago

So you think Facebook doesn't know who you really are? Just because you use a fake name and email and no phone number? That's cute...

worklogin• 11 years ago

They know who you are. Rather, they know that someone exists with your cultural, political and social preferences, and with all the people with whom you're friends.

And then people tag you in their photos. So Facebook may not strictly know your name, but any agency (of course, never in America!) who backdoors or coerces Facebook could learn everything about you.

jklinger410• 11 years ago

I use Facebook for networking and marketing because there is no better option.

So there's one reason.

xasos• 11 years ago

I find it hard to grasp why any intelligent individual who knows what goes on with Facebook would still voluntarily remain on Facebook.

Why not? Keeping up with friends and family is extremely efficient, due to FB's algorithms giving me the most relevant content. There are many great products that the FB platform has to offer and it is the reason I don't need the more trendy social networks, a la Instagram/Snapchat.

Facebook Messenger is a fantastic product and it is the main communication platform that I use on a daily basis (you can easily send photos and files). Facebook Groups makes communicating within a group a lot nicer, since you can selectively choose notifications (where you can't on a normal mailing list).

Facebook events is great for inviting people to parties, social gatherings, study groups, etc. and you can invite by group.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

I simply don't care about privacy.

I value my social life, and I value being able to actually communicate with my friends.

I have made a conscious and rational decision that my social life is more valuable to me than my privacy.

gutnor• 11 years ago

I'm not quite sure how that works for you but generally speaking, social life is all about privacy - yours and more importantly others.

You don't share everything to everybody or you end up being the sucker that gets the news late or not at all because he can never shut the fuck up.

Even if you are careful about others privacy, you can be a victim of the carelessness of others. As an example, we have friends on FB we can no longer read any news due to them friending people careless about their privacy wishes. Everything now is coded messages like "Worked better than expected. Next step tomorrow at 10", so you must have had a conversation with them outside of FB in order to know what the fuck is going on - which is the reason why we had FB in the first place.

fuzzywalrus• 11 years ago

That's wonderful but your choice is your choice and shouldn't invalidate how others choose to live their lives.

chadgeidel2• 11 years ago

"Any intelligent individual" knows that all social networks track location/behavior. "Any intelligent individual" knows that DOJ/NSA/cell providers can track your position with your cell phone. "Any intelligent individual" knows that a collection of HTTP requests can quickly identify patterns in behavior and preferences. "Any intelligent individual" knows that a few purchases with the same credit card number builds a fairly precise understanding of age/demographic information.

What makes one person's personal privacy/communication breakover point better than another?

bduerst• 11 years ago

I think they're conflating "intelligent individual" as sharing their own personal opinions on sharing meta data.

I could say that "intelligent individuals" don't project their personal views on favorable demographics, but then I would be doing the same.

zem• 11 years ago

we can't all be cool, socially active 20-somethings :) my friends' demographic is definitely facebook-using

harryh• 11 years ago

The fact that you find this hard to grasp says a lot more about your intelligence than it does of the average Facebook user. It's not exactly a mystery.

ekianjo• 11 years ago

The joy of mobile apps, pulling as much permissions as possible during install, and abusing of them whenever you run them. When I see this the debate between native apps and web apps is over, and it does not end with native apps winning.

malka• 11 years ago

the joy of Android Mobile apps. I dislike Apple for many reasons, but the permission model on iOS is a lot saner than on Android.

spacemanmatt4• 11 years ago

You still end up giving away your privacy just the same. I'm not sure how that's different.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

When I see this the debate between native apps and web apps is over, and it does not end with native apps winning.

You're acting like most people care about permissions. 99% of users just click through everything.

deevus• 11 years ago

You are the product.

icebraining5• 11 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude

spacemanmatt4• 11 years ago

A platitude is meaningless. GP is actually a true statement about using FaceBook.

govilk• 11 years ago

intimidating..told a few friends about their locations and got unfriended. It explains how much people are scared about their daily privacy information.

driverdan• 11 years ago

If they "unfriended" you for that they weren't really friends anyway.

CookieMon• 11 years ago

I use this facebook app now: http://i.imgur.com/Iyd43n6.png (Android)

It's either a well written FB app, or a no-permissions jail around Facebook's own hybrid-app/mobile-site. GPS no longer turns on, and messaging works for me.

FreakyT2• 11 years ago

I've found that just running Facebook's mobile site in Chrome works pretty well for most purposes.

cushychicken2• 11 years ago

I've been doing that since I found out they were requiring access to text messages. One year later and I have zero regrets.

__z3• 11 years ago

My last phone had Facebook as one of those apps that you couldn't uninstall. I was so pissed, I've never had any sort of Facebook app on my phone nor do I want one. Even if I never signed in. Absurd.

dublinben3• 11 years ago

You will still be tracked on other sites you browse if you are logged into Facebook with your primary browser. That is the benefit of an app like Tinfoil for Facebook, which keeps your Facebook cookie in a sandbox.

moondowner• 11 years ago

There's also 'Tinfoil for Facebook' https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco... which is opensource https://github.com/velazcod/Tinfoil-Facebook

sp332• 11 years ago

Someone used that code to make Tinfoil for Twitter as well https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mill_e.twi...

jsaxton86• 11 years ago

If you root your android device, you can install AppOps, which allows you to toggle the individual permissions on every application.

discardorama2• 11 years ago

If you root your android device,...

Not to hijack a thread, but: this is is why Apple's iOS is such a compelling case. They make it so easy to control access to the location/microphone/etc. in one tab: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services

I don't know what Google is thinking, but given the current snooping climate you think they'd err on the side of the customer... but they don't.

jahnu• 11 years ago

I use it in a second browser only for Facebook.

canvia• 11 years ago

iPhones have something very similar enabled by default as well: http://www.zdnet.com/article/four-privacy-settings-you-shoul...

pmlnr2• 11 years ago

Get your loved ones off Facebook from Salim Virani http://saintsal.com/facebook/

"I've been a big Facebook supporter - one of the first users in my social group who championed what a great way it was to stay in touch, way back in 2006. I got my mum and brothers on it, and around 20 other people. I've even taught Facebook marketing in one of the UK's biggest tech education projects, Digital Business Academy. I'm a techie and a marketer -- so I can see the implications -- and until now, they hadn't worried me. I've been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy concerns. [...] With this latest privacy change on January 30th, I'm scared."

michaelmior• 11 years ago

the message locations have more than 5 decimal places of precision, making it possible to pinpoint the sender’s location to less than a meter.

Precision is not the same as accuracy. Although the reported values may have 5 decimal places of precision, I find my location is often a bit off.

userbinator• 11 years ago

Indeed. ~2m is the limit of accuracy for a typical smartphone GPS - I've gotten down to 1.3m when standing in an open area for >10 minutes with 12 satellites in view, but that's an exceptional case.

In practice, accuracy will be in the 5-10m range.

It doesn't make it any less creepy though... which then begs the question of how the number of people wanting to send their location would change with how "approximate" of a location (i.e. rounding to some radius) they're sending. Nearest 100m? 500m? 10km? 100km? State? Country? Continent? ... Planet? I would probably be fine with the last one, but no more than that for anyone I don't know well.

kuschku2• 11 years ago

My phone – which combines GPS with GLONASS – usually gets about 40m accuracy with just GPS, but with combined GPS and GLONASS I have about 24 satellites in view, even in buildings, getting better than 1m precision.

chadgeidel2• 11 years ago

I'm always frustrated when I see non-significant precision used in articles. Even more so when they are technical in nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

StavrosK2• 11 years ago

Hmm, where do you see this? I don't use Messenger, but many of my friends do, and I've never seen this. Is it only for Messenger-to-Messenger chats?

mod• 11 years ago

I couldn't get a screenshot with the map popped-up, but if you go to "see all" on the web, you can get a full-screen view with these little location pins. Hovering over them gives you a map.

http://imgur.com/vloxbkI

StavrosK2• 11 years ago

Ah, thank you, these weren't in the small chat windows. Clicking on them gives you a full, browsable map, as well.

Tinned_Tuna• 11 years ago

A minor nit-pick, most GPS chips will happily give out a position as a best-effort.

The actual accuracy of the measurement is given by the dilution of position (DOP), which does not appear to be in the data shown in the blog post.

This would undermine their ability to pin-point their location to within a meter, as the DOP could be very high; especially in areas with lots of tall buildings or other problematic environments.

From the comparisons, it looks like the author's GPS is getting a very low DOP (i.e. a good, clean signal from a constellation of >= 5 GPS satellites).

Either way -- still glad I don't use FaceBook, and an interesting find!

bibinou• 11 years ago

The app does not only uses GPS, it uses an underlying framework that gather position from GPS and other sources like Wifi location databases, which are much more precise.

wyc• 11 years ago

You can also see if your friends are currently active using their browser, mobile device, or are inactive. These data could be used to infer usage rates over time. It might not sound that intrusive, but the tone is very different if you were to graph these same data per friend over, e.g., a month.

maxmouchet• 11 years ago

Nice extension. I did a similar project to plot conversations on Google Earth when I realized how much location information was available: https://github.com/maxmouchet/messenger-to-earth

Havoc• 11 years ago

Refused to install messenger from the start. Facebook is a sketchy company (in my opinion) & I'm fast starting to think the same of Google.

Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

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