3 ms·

That's simply down to proximity. Facebook, like Google, can tell based on your GPS where "home" is (where your phone spends the night, basically) and it knows t

That's simply down to proximity. Facebook, like Google, can tell based on your GPS where "home" is (where your phone spends the night, basically) and it knows the same about your neighbors. Your smartphone is a funnel for detailed information about you to whatever apps you install on it, especially social and communication apps. Google in particular creeped me out with this kind of "feature". A few years ago when I still used an Android phone, I changed jobs but didn't change the information in any of my social media profiles, nor in my contact card on the phone itself. After a few weeks, Google Now started giving me drive times to work at the new work address instead of the old one.

spdionis 11y ago
When i bought my android tablet i spent a few nights at my girlfriend's place and google picked it up as my home. Years after that my "home" is still there even though i do not live there. I have found no way to change that manually...
provemewrong 11y ago
Not even necessarily GPS, they can use WiFi geolocation. Remember the Street View WiFi snooping scandal?
dredmorbius 11y ago
Question: what, if any, phone do you use these days?
- morganvachon 11y ago
  I have an iPhone 6, and I'm seriously considering backing down to a non-smart phone in the future. These days I mostly use it for SMS, voice, and very, very light web browsing (basically HN and a few other news sites, and sometimes my mobile banking site). I don't do apps, and the only really compelling feature of the iPhone is Apple Pay. Now that my credit and debit cards are all smartchip enabled, even that is just a gimmick. In fact, I'd say the only thing keeping me on a smartphone at all is playing Ingress, and my wife and I both are getting bored with it. Our local groups are also playing less and less.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Thanks. I'd rightgraded to a feature phone, which often gets left off and/or at home. I recently picked up a WiFi-only tablet. For much use, that's as much connectivity as I need, though the ability to access a very small set of tools while in motion (mostly transit/navigation related) would be useful. There I could get a 4G LTE wireless hotspot, and the price for both devices and services is about right, but, as with the tablet itself, my concern is control. I'm fighting Samsung for who's boss of my tablet (have yet to root/re-ROM it), but for now, I most definately am not, and no, I'm not OK with that. A hotspot would have to support very extensive /etc/host blocklisting -- I've grown quite fond of my laptop's 60k+ entries, and use of dnsmasq. Actually starting to look at what I'd have to do to build and configure my own device, though I'm not sure that'll happen. Among other benefits, battery life for both phone and tablet is vastly better than what I'd previously had for smartphone alone. Phone'll last a week, tablet at least all day, heavy use.
newman314 11y ago
I do not have FB GPS enabled. As a side note, the fact that Google and Microsoft want people to use long SSID names to output is rather ridiculous. That really needs to be opt-in not not opt-out for any data collection.

spdionis 11y ago

When i bought my android tablet i spent a few nights at my girlfriend's place and google picked it up as my home. Years after that my "home" is still there even though i do not live there. I have found no way to change that manually...

provemewrong 11y ago

Not even necessarily GPS, they can use WiFi geolocation. Remember the Street View WiFi snooping scandal?

dredmorbius 11y ago

Question: what, if any, phone do you use these days?

morganvachon 11y ago
I have an iPhone 6, and I'm seriously considering backing down to a non-smart phone in the future. These days I mostly use it for SMS, voice, and very, very light web browsing (basically HN and a few other news sites, and sometimes my mobile banking site). I don't do apps, and the only really compelling feature of the iPhone is Apple Pay. Now that my credit and debit cards are all smartchip enabled, even that is just a gimmick. In fact, I'd say the only thing keeping me on a smartphone at all is playing Ingress, and my wife and I both are getting bored with it. Our local groups are also playing less and less.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Thanks. I'd rightgraded to a feature phone, which often gets left off and/or at home. I recently picked up a WiFi-only tablet. For much use, that's as much connectivity as I need, though the ability to access a very small set of tools while in motion (mostly transit/navigation related) would be useful. There I could get a 4G LTE wireless hotspot, and the price for both devices and services is about right, but, as with the tablet itself, my concern is control. I'm fighting Samsung for who's boss of my tablet (have yet to root/re-ROM it), but for now, I most definately am not, and no, I'm not OK with that. A hotspot would have to support very extensive /etc/host blocklisting -- I've grown quite fond of my laptop's 60k+ entries, and use of dnsmasq. Actually starting to look at what I'd have to do to build and configure my own device, though I'm not sure that'll happen. Among other benefits, battery life for both phone and tablet is vastly better than what I'd previously had for smartphone alone. Phone'll last a week, tablet at least all day, heavy use.

newman314 11y ago

I do not have FB GPS enabled. As a side note, the fact that Google and Microsoft want people to use long SSID names to output is rather ridiculous. That really needs to be opt-in not not opt-out for any data collection.