2 weeks ago, I noticed something strange about the battery
life on my iPhone. Usually, I can make it through the day no problem without
having to look for an outlet—but I found myself looking for an outlet around
5PM. I initially brushed it off as just a bug that was causing excessive power
drain, but when it happened again the next day, I began to look into it in
greater detail.
When I looked at the battery settings page, I saw that
Facebook was at the very top of the list. This struck me as odd given that I
hadn’t actually been on the Facebook app at all during those 2 days. I
eventually decided to turn off “background app refresh” for Facebook and moved
on.
I ended up forgetting about this weird Facebook battery
usage issue until I came across a post this weekend on reddit entitled: “Facebook
is Draining Your iPhone Battery Because It’s Tracking Your Location”. Needless
to say, I read the article. As it turns out, the app can send GPS information
from users’ phones to Facebook’s servers regardless of whether or not the app
is actually open. It’s this GPS usage that causes battery life to suffer. But
here’s the best part: apparently this location tracking is listed in the fine
print as a way for Facebook to “build a history of [your] precise location,
even when you’re not using the app.”
To be honest, I’m shocked that I’ve possibly been tracked by
Facebook. I suppose at some point I clicked accept to the Facebook Terms of Use
document that contained this tracking clause—but frankly I feel that my privacy
was violated. I’m curious to see if there will be an update for the app that
addresses the cause of these battery issues—for now I’ve settled with simply
disabling location services for the Facebook app itself.
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