How to disable location sharing on Facebook Messenger

How to disable location sharing on Facebook Messenger
Although it’s possible to manually deselect location sharing on individual messages, it’s clearly all too easy to forget to do that and Facebook’s own help page admits that turning off location sharing only works for the current message, and will be re-enabled when you start a fresh chat.

Therefore, my advice would be to stop Facebook Messenger from accessing your location entirely.

Instructions for iPhone/iPad users:

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, where you find a list of all of your location-aware apps.
2. Scroll to “Facebook Messenger”, and ensure that its location services are set to “Never”.
3. While you’re at it, review what other iOS apps you’re allowing to access your location data. If you are uncomfortable with why an app would need your location information, disable the feature. Note that it’s probably a good idea *not* to disable location tracking for “Find my iPhone” (if you have it enabled) as you might err.. find it hard to find your iPhone!
   
   Instructions for Android users:
   Although there have been reports that Google will introduce greater app-specific granularity to its privacy controls in the future, at the moment location privacy settings in the operating system are very much an “on or off” affair.
   So, you need to place your trust in the apps themselves, and use their options when it comes to location sharing:
   1. Open the Facebook Messenger app
   2. Click the settings icon (shaped like a gear) in the upper-right corner.
   3. Scroll to “New messages include your location by default” and uncheck it.

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   The release of Marauder’s Map as a Chrome extension certainly caused a stir, and saw many people embracing the easy way in which they could keep track on their Facebook Messenger contacts.
   
   At the time of writing the Chrome extension no longer works properly – its popularity means that it quickly smashed through the API calls limit that its mapping service provided – but programmer Aran Khanna has made the code available on Github for more technically-minded users to roll their own version.
   Khanna, who starts working as an intern at Facebook next month, says that the company is working on fixing the issue – although no details have been provided yet as to how it will do this or a timescale as to when.
   My advice? Don’t wait. Check that the phones you own, or the ones you’re responsible for protecting in your business, aren’t sharing any information which they don’t need to – which includes, of course, their location.