This is what Instagram CEO has to say on location sharing

Now, Instagram CEO Adam Moseri has reacted to the viral post. Denying the alleged location-tracking and sharing it with followers, the CEO said that location services is a device setting and not a feature from Instagram. “We don’t share your location with other people,” he says.

“Wanted to share this thread for clarity. Location Services is a device setting on your phone, not a new feature from Instagram, and it powers things like location tags. We don’t share your location with other people,” Moseri’s Twitter post reads.

In his post, Moseri has also shared a thread post by Instagram Comms- the official Twitter handle of Instagram’s PR team.

“To be clear, we don’t share your location with others. Similar to other social media companies, we use precise location for things like location tags and maps features”, it says. “People can manage Location Services via their device settings, and tag locations on their posts if they want to share that information,” the post further adds.

Earlier this month, an ex-Google engineer claimed that Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram apps may be tracking their users’ online activity. Researcher Felix Krause conducted a study on the iOS app of Instagram and Facebook where he found that both these apps can track online activity using the in-app browser to open third-party links, instead of using Apple’s in-built safari browser.

Most of the apps use the Safari- default browser on iOS to open third-party links. Facebook and Instagram, however, do not direct them to their default browser. Instead, they use custom in-app browsers when users visit webpages by clicking on a link in the iOS app. This allows the host app (Instagram and Facebook) to be able to ‘track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap.’

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