Complaints from users, sometimes ignored as delusions or elaborate conspiracy theories, have long claimed that Facebook's smartphone devices on both Android and iOS monitor users ' movements even when the ' location ' access is switched off, but the company has now publicly admitted that it actually knows where its users where and what they were up to after expressly blocking the user's location.



After a detailed report on the subject by Aleksandra Korolova, professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, U.S. senators demanded answers from the leader of social media on whether it still sidetracks user preferences to proceed with its surveillance practices.
Facebook has reported that monitoring users ' general location helped them and other Internet companies (such as Google and Twitter) by identifying logins from unknown places to protect users against intrusion and account hijacking.

Explaining how it can override GPS tracking habits and start tracking its users ' position, Facebook said that by reviewing marked images and check-in locations such as restaurants and shopping malls, its algorithms would work out that detail. The company also said that if they post an address for transactions on the shopping site of Facebook, or even from their profile data, they obtain location information from customers.