This scary app shows you where your Facebook friends are instantly
If you click on a friend you can see where they've been, too
A slightly alarming new app shows you the location of your Facebook friends - and if you click on them, you can see all the places they have ever messaged you from.
The app works within Facebook's Messenger text messaging service - displaying a square map showing the locations of friends who have sent you messages.
The app, Marauder’s Map – named after the magical map which lets Harry Potter track people – shows a map with the location of every message friends have sent you within Facebook Messenger.
A bubble pops up showing the most recent location a friend messaged you from, and if you click on it, you can see every location they have messaged you from in the past.
It’s a browser extension for Chrome, and once installed, brings up a map screen every time you open Messenger.
"Bubbles on the map represent the most recent location for each user, and clicking on a user’s bubble brings up all past location points recorded for that user," its creators say.
It only works if users haven’t disabled Facebook’s location-reporting function in Messenger – and was designed to highlight just how much people might be giving away when they use Messenger.
Its creators say, ‘This extension was developed as a demonstration not an actual tool to creep on your Facebook acquaintances.
"This is not meant to be used as a tool to creep on your friends, rather a demonstration of the scary amount of information you can gather on someone just by aggregating the data they provide through messanger."