In an effort to save face from possible user privacy concerns, Facebook on Monday released a blog post explaining privacy changes that will come with the highly anticipated iOS and Android software updates.
In June, Apple revealed iOS 13 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. According to CNBC, the update is designed to give users more control over their privacy sharing settings, a move that seemed to specifically target both Facebook and Google. Both sites have come under fire for the amount of personal data they were gathering about their users.
Now, two weeks before the updates are set to drop, Facebook has coincidentally chosen to address the upcoming privacy changes.
“Your Android or iOS location settings allow you to control when you share your device’s precise location with apps like Facebook,” Engineering Director Paul McDonald wrote. “That’s why we’re letting you know that Android and iOS have released new versions of their operating systems, which include updates to how you can view and manage your location.”
The iOS 13 update will send out reminders to users about which apps are using their exact location even when they’re not using the app, and provide them with the time that the data was gathered.
“For the first time, you can share your location to an app just once and then require it to ask you again next time it wants it,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said when the update was announced. “If you do choose to grant an app the ability to continually monitor your location in the background, we’ll give you reports so you’ll know what they’re up to.”
Facebook has come under fire multiple times in the past year for giving away users personal data without their knowledge. According to a New York Times report, Facebook gave Microsoft, Amazon, and Spotify “far greater access to people’s data than it has disclosed.”
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H/T CNBC