14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook Home won't be available until next week, even if it was unveiled a few days ago. So for now, most people only have the data Facebook revealed to go on. Most of the times, a bit of mystery is good, but maybe not with Facebook and not with a feature as big as Home.
Home is designed to take over your phone, with your approval, and makes the most of it. It replaces your lockscreen, your homescreen, your messaging app, everything.
And it's built into everything you do on your phone, when you chat with someone, Facebook knows, when you launch an app, Facebook knows and so on.
It's obvious that this raises a lot of privacy questions, questions that Facebook didn't address for the most part in its initial announcement, leaving people to speculate.
Thankfully, Facebook has published a FAQ addressing some of the biggest concerns. Overall, it looks like the company is taking privacy into account and is doing a pretty good job at it, for Facebook.
First of all, Facebook notes, Home is a completely optional experience. People have to install it to use it and they continue to use the regular Facebook app if they don't like or want Home. That's probably going to stay true for the mid-term future at least.
They can also uninstall Home or disable individual features. For example, Facebook says Home can be turned off in the "Home Settings."
It's unclear whether that means all "Home" features will be disabled leaving you with the core Facebook app functionality without actually uninstalling Home or whether this disables things like the Cover feed on the homescreen and that's it.
Facebook did say users can disable the lockscreen feed if they want to, probably the most contentious feature of Home. Most people wouldn't be comfortable with a list of updates from their friends and pages they follow constantly streaming on their lockscreen, even if those posts are public.
Facebook also explained what type of information Home tracks and stores. The app will store info on how you use it, for example, a list of your currently installed apps is maintained by Facebook. That probably includes as how often you use them and similar metrics.
Concerning location, Facebook assures users that Home will have the same location tracking permissions and capabilities like any other app.
Users can disable location tracking for the app from the Android settings as well. Even if you don't disable it, Home won't track your every move, but will add location tags to your post if you want to.