Map the places you have been
Google and Facebook both track your physical location and store the data. In this activity you will be requesting a copy of your own data from Google or Facebook and mapping the locations you have been on a map.
- Go to Google's history page which shows all sorts of information about the things you search for, click on, and watch. You may need to log in to see this page.
- Go to Google Takeout, this is where Google lets you download a copy of your own data. Warning: some of the data sets on this page can be VERY large. For this homework you only need to download Location History.
- Follow the instructions to download your data, you will likely have to wait for an email.
- Open the LocationHistory.json in a text editor. I recommend a simple text editor such as WordPad, but any text editior including Word will work.
- If there is no information in LocationHistory.json this means that Google has no tracking data on you. Instead use the data listed in Google Security Settings. In the Recent Activity box click "view all events". The data in this section is less detailed and will only give you city information and IP Address. Put the IP Addresses into InfoSniper to get the latitude and longitude data needed in #9 and #10.
- LocationHistory.json should contain records of many of the places you have been and what you were doing when you were there. For example: standing still, riding in a car, or riding a bicycle. Look for lines that look like:
"latitudeE7" : 391715232, "longitudeE7" : -865230978,
- In order to map this location it first needs to be converted into something Google Maps can read. Copy the Latitude and Longitude into the appropriate boxes in this converter and click "Add to list".
- Copy the resulting line into Google Maps. In the above example the resulting line is "39.1715232, -86.5230978" which maps to Indiana University.
- Using Multiplotter map at least 4 locations Google has recorded onto the same map.
- Go to Facebook's page on accessing your Facebook data.
- Follow the directions to download your data. Facebook takes time to assemble all of your data and put it in a zip file. When it is done you will get an email telling you where to get your data. Go ahead and download the zip file and extract the contents.
- Open the file index.htm in your web browser.
- You should now be able to see most (not all) of the data Facebook has stored about you. Go ahead and click around and look at the various types of data, most of it should look like the kind of data you can get by browsing around your account on Facebook.
- Go to the Security link on the left sidebar. Look for the Login Protection Data section. This section lists the various identifiers Facebook uses to ensure that you look "normal" when you log in. For example, there are several cookies listed, if your browser were to provide a cookie that is not on the list Facebook might be suspicious that the person logging in is not you.
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In this section there should be a couple of lines that look like the lines below. These lines indicate that on July 9th at 6:43pm eastern time I logged into Facebook from San Fransisco, California (latitude 37.376, longitude -122.152).
Estimated location inferred from IP: 37.376, -122.152
Created: Wednesday, July 9, 2014 at 6:43pm EDT - Copy the numbers after "IP:" into Google Maps. In the above example I would copy the information "37.376, -122.152" and paste it directly into Google Maps just like it was a address. These numbers are actually the latitude and longitude position you were at when you logged into Facebook.
- Using Multiplottr plot at least 4 of the locations Facebook has recorded you logging in from.