Thanks to all the scandals and data breaches last year, Facebook has lost the trust of its users. And, in a bid to regain lost trust, this Menlo Park-based social media giant has announced a new location control feature for its Android users.
Unlike iOS, Android only offers two options when it comes to granting app permissions – allow and deny. This means that an app either has access to something on your smartphone, or it doesn’t. Hence, when it comes to tracking location, if you’ve allowed the Facebook app to track your location, it not only tracks your location when you use the app, but also when you have closed it. Well, Facebook fixes this with the new location control.
Facebook has introduced a new background location control that lets you prevent its Android app from accessing your location through location services even when you are not using the app.
“Today we’re introducing a new background location control on Facebook for Android so people can choose if they want us to collect location information when they’re not using the app. For example, when people choose to use Nearby Friends, a feature that lets friends share their locations with each other, they give Facebook permission to access their location even when they’re not using the app,” said Paul McDonald, Engineering Director, Location Infrastructure, Facebook.
That said, Facebook has also mentioned that location tracking will remain turned off if you never enabled it, but, if it’s on, you will be able to turn it off. Facebook will show an alert to its Android app users who turned it on in the past.
