14 DAY TRIAL // Creeps everywhere around the world rejoice! There's now a Google Chrome extension that helps you track the movements of your friends via Facebook Messenger. The extension is called Marauders Map and allows anyone who installs it to plot the location of his friends on a map.
This map can be accessed in the Messages section of a Facebook profile and gets the location of each person using the geo-tagging features activated by default for all mobile users when they send out new messages.
As you can imagine, this extension will work with people which haven't turned off this feature, and the more you talk and exchange messages across time, the more accurate your map is.
Marauders Map isn't a hacking tool, working with data readily available to anyone interested to look for it and the way to protect your privacy is to turn off location sharing for your Facebook Messenger mobile app.
To get a hold of Marauders Map, follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Install the extension from the Google Web Store.
Step 2: Login on Facebook and go to your Messages section.
Step 3: Click on the chat tab for the person you want to plot on the map and start scrolling up as much as you want. The more you scroll up, the more messages are analyzed and plotted on the map.
Step 4: Repeat the process for every person you want to view on the map.
Step 5: Open the Marauders Map tab shown in the bottom left corner of the page.
Step 6: Enjoy the map, zooming in and out, or clicking on each person's icon to view his/her detailed movements.
An in-depth article about the developer's process can be read via a quite lengthy Medium post, and the extension can also be forked via GitHub.
PS: You better get the extension while it's still available, because its developer will be starting an internship at Facebook pretty soon, and you never know what kind of stuck-up supervisor might tell him to take it down.
UPDATE: At Facebook's request, the extension was taken down. You can still follow the installation instructions from the GitHub repository and build it yourself, but this process is way too complicated for non-technical users.
