Facebook has recently been targeted by scandals involving the misuse of the data it stores on its users. In the case of threatening people, the social network explains that it actively monitors their location, but despite good intentions, of course, you may be worried if it is also monitoring you.
Fortunately, there are some settings to be made on the phone and on Facebook itself to make it difficult to access your location and thus end up gaining more privacy. Here’s how to stop Facebook from tracking your location.
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Disabling Facebook location history
The first step to limit Facebook from tracking you is to make a setup of it, which needs to be performed on the phone. When using a computer, you’ll only be able to clear location history, but you will not be able to disable it. Here’s how to disable Facebook’s location history on Android and iPhone:
- Open the Facebook application normally and, in your home screen, touch the icon represented by “three lines”;
- Scroll down the new page to the end and expand the “Settings and privacy” option to enter “Settings”;
- Find the item “Location” in the list and enter it;
- Within the “Location Settings”, disable the “Location History” option.
How to Prevent Facebook from accessing your location on Android
Once you’ve done the above setup, it’s also important to make sure Android can not let the Facebook app have access to your device’s location features like GPS, for example. Here’s how to do this:
- Enter the Android Settings and go to “Applications”;
- Locate “Facebook” in the list and enter “Permissions”;
- In the permissions list, disable the “Local” option;
- Close the Facebook application if it is open and restart it.
How to prevent Facebook from accessing your location on the iPhone
Just like on Android, just disabling Facebook’s location function is not enough. Then you will also need to do one more configuration on the system. Check out how to do:
- Go to the iPhone “Settings” screen and enter “Privacy”;
- Touch “Location Services” and click on “Facebook”;
- On the new screen, check “Never”;
- If it is open, close the Facebook application and restart it.
Ready! Now, you already know how to stop Facebook from tracking your location when you use it.