Surely we all remember Harry Potter's magical Marauder's Map, which reveals the traces of those who roam Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... And now, this magical Marauder's Map has come to life on Facebook! A student from the University of Cambridge is responsible for this, who created a Chrome extension called Marauder, which of course works similarly for your friends on the popular social networking platform, Facebook.
- The Marauder extension works the same way:
It is widely known that Facebook shares our location data with our friends, however, what some may not know is how accurate this data is and how easily someone can extract it from the instant messaging service. The Marauder Chrome extension allows you to track your friends' every move on Facebook, collecting location data from Facebook Messenger and displaying these locations on a map. It should be noted that Facebook usually encourages Messenger users to share their location, allowing location sharing by default (most may not know it, nor have they noticed it), when users install it on their iOS or Android app.
- How does it work?
Mr. Aran Khanna, the developer of the Marauder extension, informs the public on his website how it works. Specifically, it loads a map in the Web Messenger environment and loads onto it the data from the messages sent through the Facebook Messenger application when location sharing is enabled. This means that the extension is able to map your location only in those cases when you are having a conversation with your friends through Messenger and location sharing is enabled.
Please note that the extension is unable to obtain location when you have not used Messenger at all.
- High data accuracy
However, if you want to use it, you will find that the location data is very accurate. You may be surprised to see how accurate it is in mapping your friends' locations, but also how easy it is to use this very important information. All you have to do in this case is a simple click on Facebook Messenger and start chatting with your friends.
On the other hand, if you're not excited about the prospect and don't want your friends who use the extension to track you under any circumstances, simply keep your location data private, and in general it would be a good idea to disable the ability to share your location, either directly from Messenger or from your phone's settings.
