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Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger
- kanche 11y agoThe 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.
- nodata 11y agoOr maybe not lie?
- hiamnew 11y agoSmall 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.
- icebraining 11y agoOn that note, I recommend Mark Twain's On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2572/pg2572.html http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2572/pg2572.html
- dmak 11y agoWhile I do agree with being able to make small lies, but why would you tell someone whose waiting for you that you are 5 minutes away if you are clearly not. Maybe it's just me, but when someone says 5 minutes, I don't expect 10, 15, or 30. I expect 5 minutes. This is especially true in Asian cultures.
- xux 11y agoThe point is, it doesn't matter. It's none of your business why someone lies.
- dmak 11y agoActually, the point is to manage expectations. Instead of saying I'll be there in 5 minutes, it would be better to say I am going to be X minutes late. There's lying to hide your business, but there's also lying and being inconsiderate of other people's time.
- Squarel 11y agoOr, it could be your best estimate, based on current traffic conditions or walking speed. I always underestimate how long it will take,this does not mean I am lying, it means I am bad at guessing how long it takes me to walk/drive/sit in a train somewhere
- lmm 11y agoIn which case surely your friend getting an automatic, accurate version of your position from facebook would be better for both of you?
- personlurking 11y agoOne of the worst offenders is Brazil. When living there, it was common to hear "I'm on my way" (to an agreed meeting point at a specific time) but that could mean they actually are on their way or that they've just got up from the couch and will go take a shower, choose what to wear, maybe have a bite to eat and then think about transportation. Knowing this, the trick was either to not take specific times seriously or to give a fake meeting time (earlier than the actual one) so the person gets there on time.
- tolt 11y agoAs a norwegian living in Peru I used the same methods. I started to tell my peruvian friends that we were meeting at a resturant instead of a street corner. Different cultures have different understanding of time.
- nodata 11y agoWhat's the benefit (to both parties) for the example he gave?
- learnstats2 11y agoWhen people make this lie, what they are really saying is: "Stop whatever you are doing and be ready and waiting for when I finally arrive". The negative consequences fall on the person receiving the lie. It's not a courtesy. It has long-term consequences to your credibility and trustworthiness. It is far better to tell the truth in this case.
- Squarel 11y agoThe truth would be "I have no clue how long it will take me to get there"
- learnstats2 11y ago"I just passed landmark X and I'm on foot" is often more helpful.
- corobo 11y agoOr maybe "Here's my GPS coords and current speed". Facebook Messenger should add direction and speed information!
- mc808 11y agoIt would also be helpful if they could notify the recipient when my digestive system is below 10% capacity, so they would know that I'm likely to stop for a bite to eat (and maybe suggest a good restaurant nearby if Facebook hasn't done so already).
- smokinn 11y agoGlympse does this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glympse.android.glympse&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glympse.an...
- spacemanmatt 11y agoDoes it still suck raw eggs? I wanted that functionality but found Glympse too horrible to use at the time, a while back.
- rdl 11y agoThere are also cases where lying to say something is longer than the direct distance is more accurate. i.e. if I know I'm going to stop for gas/etc., even if I'm "5 minutes away" by distance, I might say I'm 10 minutes away.
- darklajid 11y agoThat'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..
- kanche 11y agoThanks for seeing the focal point of my comment. Cheers! In India, " bus(just) 5 minute mein(in) aaya(coming) " is a way of saying I am going to reach there soon and the other end knows this means either he is far away or hasn't even started yet. His reply was a banter. Literal translation created this whole mess! This has nothing to do with ETA.
- outericky 11y agoAt least on iOS, they have to ask to use location services. Granted, it doesn't say "so we can tell your contacts exactly where you are..." but for iOS users at least, the default should always be "No" when an app asks. Then decide later.
- bentcorner 11y agoI'm adding to the noise, but on Firefox there's a "add collapse subthreads button" add-on. I think there's one for Chrome too.
- pavel_lishin 11y agohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collapsible-c/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...
- rainingtomorrow 11y agoThat's a good example of how faulty "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about" argument is.
- d0vs 11y agoHe has something to hide
- josefresco 11y agoEveryone, has something to hide.
- dspillett 11y agoIt 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?
- LLWM 11y agoThen it's a good thing Facebook came through with the more accurate information.
- calcsam 11y agoThis is really, really bad for people in abusive relationships.
- onewaystreet 11y agoBeing in an abusive relationship is bad for people.
- monkeyprojects 11y agoYep, but its not easy to escape from abuse. Until people accept they are being abused they will deny it.
- Flimm 11y agoIs my relationship with Facebook an abusive relationship? Only tongue-in-cheek.
- beagle3 11y agoYes, it is. Maybe not physically abusive, but definitely emotionally and trust-ly abusive. You think you are in a relationship with facebook, but facebook is secretly also in a relationship with all kinds of three letter agencies, state actors and advertisers - and tells them everything you told facebook.
- corobo 11y agoIf you know it and can prove it, it's not a secret. Advertisers definitely not secretly, you can easily see what information advertisers see at facebook.com/ads Facebook only knows what you are telling it, maybe don't announce your next bank robbery on your status update and you'll be alright
- morganvachon 11y ago> Facebook only knows what you are telling it, maybe don't announce your next bank robbery on your status update and you'll be alright Right, because only criminals have something to hide. Maybe it's my generation, but I don't automatically trust Facebook (or the government for that matter, hello IRS) with the safety and security of my personal information. There are plenty of bad actors out there who can take my perfectly innocent movements and information and either ruin my life for the hell of it, or steal my identity and profit from it.
- kosei 11y agoI'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?
- rtpg 11y 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 11y agoBut that doesn't really answer the question of why sending your location to everyone BY DEFAULT is a good idea.
- rtpg 11y agoYeah, I guess so. Beyond the malicious reasons, there could just be the thought that the utility outweighs the privacy costs for the user experience. Especially considering your FB friends are supposedly people you know in real life and trust (at least more than people you might have on other IM services). I can understand the divisiveness, but I can also imagine people working on messenger (who probably use it a lot more than you or I) being on this, and genuinely believing it leads to a better user experience for most people (see read receipts).
- icebraining 11y agoyour FB friends are supposedly people you know in real life and trust If the FB developers think that's generally true, I'd say they are pretty incompetent. Even my parents, with just a couple dozen friends, have FB friends they have never met, let alone my teenage brother and his friends, who have hundreds of FB friends each. This is usually not a problem, since they don't post sensitive information on their timeline, only in the chat to specific people.
- rand334 11y agoAnd then you remember where Facebook's initial funding sources came from....
- janpieterz 11y agoWhich 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_funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Initial_fun...
- personlurking 11y agoI believe rand334 is referring to the video below, regarding US government connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGdWsxHJlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGdWsxHJlM
- janpieterz 11y agoThose connections show a blurring of the lines between government and corporations, which we all know exist, but don't really seem to indicate an actual active connection currently exists (on that level). It seems to be taking the radical conservative viewpoint of Thiel as granted, while those are at best part of his viewpoint. Also Thiel is supposed to be part of the board of a radical group, but the text was hard to hear (Vanguard VAC) is what I could come up with), while I could find no such connection on the internet. In-Q-Tel itself has a lot of controversy, but again, controversy doesn't imply any truth. There have been In-Q-Tel companies that have worked perfectly fine and we don't see as anything bad, for example Keyhole. The channel itself also doesn't breathe neutrality to me, though that doesn't mean I'd take their claims for not true, it does indicate some more research from them would have been nice. It seems to be more based on loose connections instead of proven active collaborations.
- rand334 11y agoWhat exactly do you think is good, okay, or normal about In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm, having connections to the world's most popular social network... blows my mind.
- butwhy 11y agoFeature 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 11y agoThere's a setting in Messenger to disable it for all chats. And on iOS, just disable location services for Messenger.
- butwhy 11y agoI don't think you understand my comment. I don't want to disable it.
- arankhanna 11y agoI 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 11y agoHopefully Facebook doesn't treat you differently based on this article. Good luck with your internship!
- dep_b 11y agoYou cannot only detect with 90% accuracy where they are but also with 90% accuracy that they're running Android.
- orthoganol 11y agoI 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- e12e 11y agoIt'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 11y 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 11y agoI 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.
- ekianjo 11y agoThe 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 11y agothe joy of Android Mobile apps. I dislike Apple for many reasons, but the permission model on iOS is a lot saner than on Android.
- spacemanmatt 11y agoYou still end up giving away your privacy just the same. I'm not sure how that's different.
- amyjess 11y 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 11y agoYou are the product.
- icebraining 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude
- spacemanmatt 11y agoA platitude is meaningless. GP is actually a true statement about using FaceBook.
- spacemanmatt 11y agoYou don't have to agree with it. It's a commonly part of the dictionary definition.
- govilk 11y agointimidating..told a few friends about their locations and got unfriended. It explains how much people are scared about their daily privacy information.
- driverdan 11y agoIf they "unfriended" you for that they weren't really friends anyway.
- CookieMon 11y agoI use this facebook app now: http://i.imgur.com/Iyd43n6.png 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.
- FreakyT 11y agoI've found that just running Facebook's mobile site in Chrome works pretty well for most purposes.
- cushychicken 11y agoI've been doing that since I found out they were requiring access to text messages. One year later and I have zero regrets.
- FreakyT 11y agoIt's ridiculous how many completely irrelevant permissions they demand! Facebook's laundry list of permissions is perhaps the best example of how Android's permission system is completely broken.
- cushychicken 11y agoI agree, but I'm not married enough to the native client to be upset about it when there's a perfectly good mobile site waiting for me. If they tank their native site, well, then they won't get to harvest any more data from me.
- c22 11y agoI think Android's permission system works great. I saw Facebook's list of required permissions, considered whether these functions were necessary to provide the service I needed and whether I trusted Facebook to manage them for me, then declined to install the app.
- __z 11y ago
- canvia 11y agoiPhones have something very similar enabled by default as well: http://www.zdnet.com/article/four-privacy-settings-you-should-enable-in-ios-7-immediately/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/four-privacy-settings-you-shoul...
- pmlnr 11y agoGet your loved ones off Facebook from Salim Virani http://saintsal.com/facebook/ 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 11y 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 11y agoIndeed. ~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.
- kuschku 11y agoMy 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.
- jfaat 11y agoIn fact, the vast majority of modern smartphones support GLONASS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_supporting_GLONASS_navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_supporting_...
- kuschku 11y agoIt makes sense, north of 50°N GPS accuracy goes quickly down, as most of its satellites’ orbits are optimized for coverage over the equator.
- 11y ago
- StavrosK 11y agoHmm, 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 11y agoI 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 http://imgur.com/vloxbkI
- StavrosK 11y agoAh, thank you, these weren't in the small chat windows. Clicking on them gives you a full, browsable map, as well.
- Tinned_Tuna 11y agoA 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 11y agoThe 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 11y agoYou 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.
- ronald_dregan 11y agoif you use facebook or any facebook service in any way, shape, or form, you are an incredibly stupid human being.
- maxmouchet 11y agoNice 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 https://github.com/maxmouchet/messenger-to-earth
- Havoc 11y agoRefused to install messenger from the start. Facebook is a sketchy company (in my opinion) & I'm fast starting to think the same of Google.