Senators press Facebook over user location tracking policies
Source: The Hell
BY EMILY BIRNBAUM - 11/19/19 06:00 AM EST
A pair of bipartisan senators are pressing Facebook over its location tracking policies, questioning whether the social media giant continues to track users even when they've said they don't want Facebook to do so.
Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Tuesday sent a letter addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg raising concern that Facebook ignores the wishes of users who don't want their exact location to be tracked. The letter comes on the heels of a Facebook blog post in which the company pledged it would stop tracking users' location data when they chose that option on the latest Apple and Google software updates.
But the senators said Facebook's blog post leaves open the possibility that it will continue to record and use location information, even when users have opted out on Apple's iOS or Google's Android software.
"If a user has decided to limit Facebook’s access to his or her location, Facebook should respect these privacy choices," Coons and Hawley wrote in the letter. "The language in the blog post, however, indicates that Facebook may continue to collect location data despite user preferences, even if the user is not engaging with the app, and Facebook is simply deducing the user’s location from information about his or her internet connection."
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/471032-senators-press-facebook-over-user-location-tracking-policies
Facebook, imho, has had the most corrosive effect on American society of anything in the 21st century thus far. Any bad news for Zuckerberg is good news to me. (For those thinking of FOX "News," I would remind you
that cesspool was on the air before 2000.)