Facebook Messenger Now Only Shares Your Location Upon Your Request
We mentioned last week that Facebook Messenger shares your location with every post , giving some people access to that information using a Chrome extension. Facebook made a difference today, so you can only share your location if you choose to send it in a separate message.
While it used to be pretty easy to turn off the messenger’s location sharing feature, many people didn’t know that messenger logged your location with every message in the first place. Now the geodata is really a must, because you can only send your location by clicking on the icon (three dots) and then at the location of the pin. This will send a map of your location in a separate message. Facebook is also making it very clear that your location data is not collected at all unless you choose to use the location sharing feature:
Messenger does not receive location information from your device in the background — only every time you select a location and press Send while using the Messenger app. We are not asking for any new permissions for your information.
This means you have complete control over whether you want to share your location at all. If you never use the pinning feature, Messenger will never register your location. You can still share your location, but only when and where you want. However, this probably won’t delete the old location information. Someone may still be tracking your previous locations if you had location tracking turned on before, so keep that in mind.
A New Way to Send Location to Messenger | Facebook Newsroom