Watching a friend sleep is downright creepy and its digital equivalent has finally arrived: tracking a friend’s sleep pattern remotely via Facebook. Courtesy of a software developer in Denmark, users can now track when their friends sleep from activity data from the social networking platform.
The tool, which was created by Søren Louv-Jansen, uses timestamps stored by Facebook’s Messenger app and site to see when people are offline and online. Since most people check their Facebook right before going to bed and immediately when they wake up, the tool is able to deliver insight about sleeping habits.
“Everybody I’ve shown this to have been equally fascinated and outraged by the accuracy with which it predicts their sleep habits,” wrote Louv-Jansen in a Medium post. “In this digital world we leave footprints where we go, and when we do it, without even thinking about it. Facebook might block this little “hack”, so your friends no longer can track you, but Facebook will always be able to do their own data analysis which is undoubtably [sic] way better than what I’ve come up with. They are likely using this data for profiling, and creating more user-specific ads.”
Louv-Jansen, who shared the source code for his tool on GitHub, told The Washington Post that Facebook has contacted him, saying it violates their terms of service. To utilize the tool, users would have to clone the source code and run the service locally.
While the tool could be seen as an invasion of privacy, Louv-Jansen maintains that his point is “people should be aware whatever they do, they’re not alone, someone is always watching.”
“My point was not to spy on my friends,” told Louv-Jansen to The Post. “I want people to be aware that they’re leaving some digital footsteps everywhere they go.”
