Facebook has been constantly tracking your location using your iPhone’s GPS, and it’s draining your battery.
It’s not surprising that Facebook does this, since the company has a history of tracking users when they’re not aware, and that the app tracks you when it’s off is clearly stated in the app itself. But the question of why the app drains your battery started as a real mystery.
On Thursday, Circa co-founder Matt Gilligan wrote on Medium that the Facebook app on his iPhone was running in the background, even when he turned off background refresh for the app, which is supposed to shut off most app functions. The app accounted for 15 percent of his battery drain as a result.
As for what the app is actually doing while running in the background, nobody was certain, and Facebook wasn’t saying anything except for that it was hoping to find a fix.
Security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski analyzed the Facebook app’s code and found that the app is sending devices’ location information to Facebook in the background. “If you move around a lot,” Zdziarski wrote me in an email, “you're likely to use more battery but the combination of GPS and networking going on in the background is likely the majority cause of battery drain.”
Watch more from Motherboard: All the Ways to Hack Your Phone
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/facebook-is-draining-your-iphone-battery-because-its-tracking-your-location
It’s not surprising that Facebook does this, since the company has a history of tracking users when they’re not aware, and that the app tracks you when it’s off is clearly stated in the app itself. But the question of why the app drains your battery started as a real mystery.
On Thursday, Circa co-founder Matt Gilligan wrote on Medium that the Facebook app on his iPhone was running in the background, even when he turned off background refresh for the app, which is supposed to shut off most app functions. The app accounted for 15 percent of his battery drain as a result.
As for what the app is actually doing while running in the background, nobody was certain, and Facebook wasn’t saying anything except for that it was hoping to find a fix.
Security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski analyzed the Facebook app’s code and found that the app is sending devices’ location information to Facebook in the background. “If you move around a lot,” Zdziarski wrote me in an email, “you're likely to use more battery but the combination of GPS and networking going on in the background is likely the majority cause of battery drain.”
Watch more from Motherboard: All the Ways to Hack Your Phone
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/facebook-is-draining-your-iphone-battery-because-its-tracking-your-location
