On Wednesday, Instagram rolled out a Map feature to U.S. users that will share your location in real time to mutual followers. The feature is not turned on by default, but once you grant people access, Instagram Reels, posts or stories with a location tagged in them can show up on a map for 24 hours after they were posted.
Instagram already allowed people to share their location in Direct Messages, but this new Map feature takes it one step further by sharing this information in a map format for mutual followers.
Although Map is described by Instagram as “a new, lightweight way to connect with each other,” that bid for connection can also expose where you live and where you regularly go to people and brands you would rather not have such specific data.
“Absolutely make the choice to have it off,” said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
When you decide to share your location with people, you are broadcasting valuable information.
“It can be used by law enforcement to track your actions. It can be used by advertisers to be like, ‘Oh, they frequently go by this place. Let’s serve them ads for this place all the time,’” Schroeder said.
Schroeder said location-sharing not only reveals where you are at a given time, which is a security risk in itself, but it also exposes your routine and your connections to stalkers or anyone with an agenda against you.
If someone “sees that you’re going to drop off and pick up at certain times, they now know where your kid goes to school or day care ― that’s a security thing you should be thinking about,” Schroeder said as one example. With location-sharing, people can also figure out where you go to church, which political groups you belong to, or what kind of medical providers you use, which are also sensitive information, she added.
Meta states that you can use the Map feature to find friends at a concert, as one positive example, but Schroeder notes that there are safer, more private ways to achieve this: “If your friend wanted you to know that they were at a concert, they would text you or do a hashtag on a picture.”
There are also other location-sharing options that do not involve sharing this information to a social media platform like Instagram, which uses this information to help businesses determine which ads you might be interested in.
Apple’s “Find My” location feature, for example, is encrypted and stored within your device, meaning it would not be available to law enforcement seeking this data from a company like Apple. As a result, “It’s not as easily used for advertisements and other kinds of manipulation that often happen with location tracking,” Schroeder said.
If “the government came trying to compel that information in the future, Apple just does not have that information to share,” explained Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“It is a highly personal decision if you want to share your location with a select group of friends,” he noted. “But when you do it through a platform owned by Meta, you should understand that information will also be used to target you with ads. And if Meta is retaining that information, it could one day be compelled by the government.”
“I think the real privacy risk comes from sharing your location through an intermediary like Meta,” Trujillo said. “When you share your location data with friends through Meta, Meta is also using that location data for purposes that are not really benefiting you. It’s to benefit its own profit margin.”
See for yourself how the feature works. Keep in mind that the feature is still being rolled out and is not yet available widely.
To use Map:
1. Click the upper right hand arrow in Instagram to go to your messages. A globe titled “Map” should appear next to your profile icon if the feature has been rolled out to your account.
2. Select “Map” and see where you are. If location-sharing is turned off, your profile icon should be captioned “Not sharing” on the Map.
3. If you select to turn on the Map feature, you can choose which limited group of people can see it. You have the option between followers you follow back, people in your selected “close friends” group, only specific people, or no one at all.
Once location-sharing is turned on, Instagram states that “your precise location updates every time you open Instagram. It disappears if you don’t open the app for 24 hours.”
If you do use the Map feature, be vigilant about who is in your friends list and regularly check to restrict people from it. Schroder said she is concerned that users may turn Map on once and forget to turn it off.
“I am very happy to hear that the default is that it’s off, and it takes a deliberate action to turn it on. But how many times have we turned on a service for one specific scenario and then just forgot to put it back?” she said.
Your friends on Instagram might include hundreds of people you have never met in person. Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said with more followers, “It might become more difficult at scale to remember exactly who you’re sharing with.“
Whether it creeps you out or comforts you to have constant access to where someone is, location-sharing is here to stay.
It has become an expectation for staying connected for all generations. In an April survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, those between the ages of 18 to 29 were the most likely group to have the feature turned on in their phones, but people between 45 and 60 were the most likely group to share location with three or more people.
If you’re going to do it through Instagram’s Map feature, be careful about who you consider your friend, and consider if there’s a less public way to let a friend or acquaintance know where you are.
“I would encourage people to think really strongly about what is the purpose that you would want to come from sharing your location data,” Schroeder said. “Is there a safer or easier way to do that more deliberately, with the specific people that you want to share your location with?”
