Even with the location marker – in the text filed – toggled off in Facebook’s Messenger app for iOS or Android, the app still logs your location data on a map which is constantly uploaded to Facebook’s servers, leaving it open for prying eyes. What if you want to turn off location sharing completely? You can, and we’ll show you how to do just that.
There was a time when location tracking, courtesy of our smartphones, was something to be excited about, but as it stands today this feature has become increasingly intrusive and a major privacy concern – sometimes through fault of our own, but often because key information is kept from us by some app makers, and Facebook Messenger happens to be just one of those.
Surprised?
We recently covered news regarding a Chrome extension called Marauders Map which pretty much proves how Facebook keeps a log of all your location history that it has stored from your messages, even if you think that your location is not being shared at all – recall the location marker bit we mentioned earlier. As I said, most of us have already left a huge footprint of our location history out there, but you have to begin from somewhere and put an end to these evil designs – or schemes, depending what you would like to call them.
The best and most effective way to remove any chances of you ever stumbling into revealing your location through the Messenger app is to simply disable it on the system level for good, well, until you decide to revert back to sharing your travels.
Android
Step 1: To begin, simply launch the Messenger app on your phone or tablet.
Step 2: Hit the ‘Settings’ tab and simply disable the Location settings by tapping on it.
iOS
Step 1: To begin, launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad from your home screen.
Step 2: Navigate to Privacy > Location Services.
Step 3: Scroll below to look for the ‘Messenger’ app and tap it.
Step 4: Now, select ‘Never’ as the option and exit the Settings app.
With the location option disabled on both Android and iOS, the Messenger app will not log your location henceforth. This also means that you won’t be able to show off to your friends from where you’re actually sending messages from. But you already knew that didn’t you?
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