Mapping app allows Facebook users to ‘stalk’ their friends
Google Chrome extension pulls location data from Facebook messages.
Facebook’s default setting for messages tracks users’ locations, and a new web tool scrapes all that data to show just how it can be used.
Harvard undergrad Aran Khanna created the “Marauder’s Map”, nicknamed after a map in the Harry Potter series, to highlight the amount of personal information that Facebook users are giving up, sometimes unwittingly. The map works with Google’s Chrome browser and allows people to map each of the locations attached to their friends’ messages.
Based on one friend’s data, Khanna was able to determine where his dorm room was located on Stanford’s campus. Khanna posted a screenshot on a blog post:
Published On 27 May 2015