New York: Facebook users who keep their location turned on may realise that they are being offered friend suggestions based on location. This is because the social media giant has stalked you and used your phone's location to suggest new people.
A tech website fusion reported that this accuracy has surprised as well as disturbed Facebook users.
And if this news has disturbed you and you want to get rid of Facebook tracking your location then you just have to turn off Facebook's access to your location -- a feature which is in your phone's privacy settings.
In the settings you will see “Location Services” where you need to click and select “Facebook.” To fully disable location sharing, you need to tap “never” and it is done.
"Thanks to tracking the location of users' smartphones, the social network may suggest that you friend people you have shared a GPS data point with, meaning your friend suggestions could include someone whose face you know, but whose name you did not until Facebook offered it up to you," Tech website Fusion reported on Tuesday.
This happens when two people are at the same place at the same time and used their smartphones to either check-in or just scroll through what his/her friends might have shared on the website
Facebook "always" has access to a user's location until the setting is changed to "never".
Meanwhile, Facebook has clarified that this is not the only reason why users are getting these suggestions.
"The two persons must have had something else in common, such as overlapping networks," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
"Location-information by itself does not indicate that two people might be friends. That's why location is only one of the factors we use to suggest people you may know," the spokesperson said.
(With IANS Inputs)
