Facebook for Android gets new location privacy controls

Social networking giant Facebook has a sour reputation as far as user data goes. And it’s not for nothing. Last year, the company was embroiled in one data breach after the other, and it may have not a major chunk of its users, but it definitely lost its credibility among masses.

This may be the reason why the company has been trying to take measures to regain the trust of its target audience. Today, the social media giant has announced some location control settings for Android. With this, Facebook wants to give its users more control over how much and what kind of information they share with the social media platform.

The new setting also lets users control if the app can access their location when they are not using it via background location. This can be done by following a two-step process. The first thing that a user needs to for this is to decide whether or not the Facebook app has access to their location at all. And then, they can take their call on whether they want it to have access to their location when they are not using it.

Facebook says that it accesses people’s background location in order to give them relevant suggestions like Nearby Friends, suggestions for things to do in a particular area, and ads that will prove to be more useful to the users.

We should mention that in case you never opted into Location Services, they will remain disabled. However, in case you opted in for it sometime in the past, Facebook will send you an alert so that you can give your settings a quick look and decide if you want something changed.

In case you want to manually check whether the social networking giant has access to your background location, here are the steps you can follow:

• Go to your Facebook app and click on the three-lined icon on the top right.
• Scroll down and select ‘Settings and Privacy’.
• Press on ‘Settings‘.
• Scroll down to ‘Location’. Here, you will be able to see exactly how much access Facebook has to your location information and will be able to control that too.