Washington, Sep 18 : Facebook has reportedly published a blog post explaining its decision to change the location permission for people who've turned on Nearby Friends as iOS8 changed its location tracking permission from "Yes/No" to "Always/While Using the App/Never."

The pre-emptive move was aimed at preventing freak outs and explaining that the social networking website, which has often been accused of invading users' privacy in the past, is not tracking Facebook account-holders any more than it already did, reported Techcrunch.

The changes will also allow users to disable the location tracking feature if they want to.

Facebook assured its users in the post that "nothing has changed about Facebook" and that whatever changes have been made were necessitated by Apple's new Location Services setting. The social network will not get any new location information when the users upgrade to iOS8, the post explained.

It also said that for other apps like Messenger and Instagram, which do not rely on getting location in the background, the location services for iOS8 app versions will start at "While Using the App."

The decision to make Nearby Friends opt-in rather than opt-out was taken to minimize privacy issues. (ANI)