Location-based ads cannot be avoided by Facebook users, investigation finds

Moreover, turning off location history in the app, or hiding their work location on their profile and never use the company’s ‘check in’ feature, still doesn’t stop the social media platform from accessing users’ location. Overall, there is no combination of settings that users can enable to prevent their location data from being used by advertisers to target them, The Guardian has cited the privacy researcher Aleksandra Korolova.

Facebook users can control to an extent how much information they give the company about their location. They can enable “location services” for the social media platform, allowing their iPhone to provide ultra-precise location data to the company, or they may “check in” to shops, restaurants and theatres, telling the social network where they are on a sporadic basis.

However, while users can decide to give more information to Facebook, Korolova revealed they cannot decide to stop the social network knowing where they are altogether nor can they stop it selling the ability to advertise based on that knowledge.