Privacy issues at stake.
By Raif Karera
WASHINGTON, DC: While millions around the world are aware of and utilize Facebook’s location feature that lets you share your whereabouts with friends, many might not know just how simple it could be for a complete stranger to access the same information.
Aran Khanna, a student developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has created a Chrome extension called the Marauder’s Map that trawls for location data from Facebook Messenger and uses it to plot the locations of anyone in a group chat to within three feet, friend or not.
According to The Next Web, while it may be unnerving, the Marauders Map isn’t doing anything insidious; it simply retrieves the latitude and longitude attached to messages from Javascript objects browsers automatically stores.
“I decided to write this extension, because we are constantly being told how we are losing privacy with the increasing digitization of our lives, however the consequences never seem tangible,” wrote Khanna on Medium. “With this code you can see for yourself the potentially invasive usage of the information you share, and decide for yourself if this is something you should worry about.”
The Marauders Map, which was named as a nod to the Harry Potter series, can only track the locations of individuals who have enabled location services for Facebook Messenger, so as long as it is deactivated Messenger users can stay off the radar and stay that much more in control of their privacy.
It was only last year that Facebook had to defend itself against a tide of public criticism after ambiguity arose concerning how Messenger accessed smartphones’ cameras and microphones, while The New York Times reported Monday that at least five data protection watchdogs in Europe are questioning Facebook’s privacy settings.
In April, French, Italian, and Spanish privacy officials said they had opened investigations into the social network’s privacy policies; similar inquiries had already been initiated by Dutch, Belgian, and German officials.