Many Facebook users actively share too much, while others do so unwittingly, but the social network may be revealing more about users than the majority realise.
Using ‘time stamps’ taken from Facebook’s own Messenger service, a developer has discovered a way to determine the sleeping habits of his friends.
What’s more, he said it’s possible for anyone to access the same ‘time stamps’ and code to check when their friends are asleep.
Using ‘time stamps’ taken from Facebook’s own Messenger service, a developer has discovered a way to determine the sleeping habits of his friends. The ‘mini hack’ was found by San Francisco-based software engineer, Søren Louv-Jansen
The ‘mini hack’ was found by San Francisco-based software engineer, Søren Louv-Jansen.
He blogged about the discovery after realising it was possible to build up a database of when his Facebook friends had last been online.
This is possible without any coding know-how by opening Messenger, searching for a friend and looking for the ‘Last seen’ time below their name.
Clik here to view.
Many people visit Facebook first thing in the morning and last thing before bed, so Facebook activity can be used to track sleeping habits
He was curious to see where this ‘last seen’ data was coming from, and after doing some research, he found a list of his Facebook friends’ user IDs and last activity time stamps.
This, he said, is embedded in the initial mark-up of Messenger.com, and can be viewed by simply visiting the website and clicking ‘View Source’ to see for yourself.
‘Many people visit Facebook as the first thing in the morning, and the last thing before going to bed. It is therefore possible to get a good impression of their sleeping habits,’ explained Louv-Jansen.
‘By creating a simple service that checks Facebook every 10 minutes, I’m able to get an accurate picture of my friends’ Facebook usage.’
Louv-Jansen has since published the program’s source code onto GitHub. ‘Git’ is a widely used source code management system for software development.
Clik here to view.
Søren Louv-Jansen found a list of his Facebook friends’ user IDs and last activity time stamps. This, he said, is embedded in the initial mark-up of Messenger.com, and can be viewed by simply visiting the website and clicking ‘View Source’ to see for yourself
Clik here to view.
San Francisco-based software engineer, Søren Louv-Jansen realised it was possible to build up a database of when his Facebook friends had last been online. ‘By creating a simple service that checks Facebook every 10 minutes, I’m able to get an accurate picture of my friends’ Facebook usage’ he said
GitHub is used by many developers and hackers to put large amounts of information for developer communities to see and take advantage of.
It does require a certain level of software knowledge to use, however.
‘Everybody I’ve shown this to have been equally fascinated and outraged by the accuracy with which it predicts their sleep habits,’ said Louv-Jansen.
‘In this digital world we leave footprints where we go, and when we do it, without even thinking about it.’
Louv-Jansen is convinced that while Facebook could learn of this this little hack and eventually block friends from tracking when you’re online, Facebook will always be able to do their own data analysis.
‘They are likely using this data for profiling, and creating more user-specific ads,’ he added.