Facebook has filed several patent applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office for technology that uses your location data to predict where you’re going and when you’re going to be offline. A May 30, 2017, Facebook application titled “Offline Trajectories” describes a method to predict where you’ll go next based on your location data.
In 2016, Google Maps for Android came under fire for introducing a similar feature called Driving Mode, which guessed the user’s destination, based on current location and web search history. After public backlash, a Google spokesperson clarified that the feature can only predict when you’re going to preprogrammed home and work destinations. Other locations, based on Google searches, for example, will be shown as suggestions.
Another Facebook patent application titled “Location Prediction Using Wireless Signals on Online Social Networks” describes how tracking the strength of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and near-field communication (NFC) signals could be used to estimate your current location, in order to anticipate where you will go next.
This “background signal” information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide “the advantage of more accurately or precisely determining a geographic location of a user.”
Yet another Facebook patent application, “Predicting Locations and Movements of Users Based on Historical Locations for Users of an Online System,” further details how location data from multiple people would be used to glean location and movement trends and to model location chains.
— source buzzfeednews.com | Dec 10, 2018