One Simple Hack: Stop Your Phone From Tracking You Today!

LONDON (AP) — Smartphones serve as valuable aids for daily activities, yet they can access almost every detail of your personal information, such as all the locations you have visited — provided you grant them permission.

Whenever you utilize a mapping application to locate a new eatery suggested by your friend, or open up your phone’s web browser to verify the cost of an item spotted during some leisure browsing, you might inadvertently permit your device to monitor your whereabouts and disseminate this data to various entities.

Cell phones employ multiple signals for determining your position, such as cellular network pings from towers, nearby Wi-Fi hotspots, Bluetooth devices, and satellite-based GPS systems.

Occasionally, your phone must have access to your location to offer beneficial features, such as guiding an Uber driver to your pickup spot. However, in many instances, there isn’t much reason to monitor your movements, potentially allowing apps, advertising services, or cybercriminals to misuse this information.

Whether it’s through fitness monitoring or using GPS for directions, each time your device pings your location, it might disclose information regarding your daily habits and whereabouts — data that could pose risks if accessed improperly," explained Darren Guccione, CEO at Keeper Security. "Individuals ought to activate their location services solely when required, like when navigating, dealing with an emergency, or updating friends they trust, then promptly switch them off once done.

Specialists caution that location data might be employed to monitor individuals who frequent certain places. abortion clinics "An unhappy former partner might utilize location sharing to track someone, or an abuser in your present relationship could compel you to share locations as a form of control," explained David Ruiz, who serves as a senior privacy advocate at the cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes.

Below are several suggestions to ensure minimal use of location tracking:

App permissions

Go to your phone's settings menu to review the permission settings.

Users of iPhones can navigate to the Privacy & Security section, followed by selecting Location Services, to review the configurations specific to each application. Cybersecurity specialists advise against permitting applications continuous access to your location when running in the background. Rather, configure these apps to prompt permission every time they want to utilize your location, allow them to do so solely while active, or disable their ability to use your location altogether.

As you explore the Location Services settings, you may see small arrows showing which applications have accessed your location. A purple arrow signifies recent use, whereas a gray one points to activity from within the last 24 hours.

It varies somewhat for Android devices due to the numerous variations from different phone makers. Typically, you should go to settings Then, tap the Location icon, allowing you to activate or deactivate it for every application.

To adjust settings for separate applications, tap App location permissions , where you'll find options akin to those found in iOS.

iPhone privacy

Apple offers various methods to reduce third-party tracking that could involve location data. Within the iPhone’s Privacy & Security settings, you can find a section labeled as the Tracking tab where there is an option called "Allow Apps to Request to Track." If you disable this feature, all future app requests for permission to track will be automatically rejected, and these apps won’t have access to your device’s advertising identifier either.

Advertising ID

Privacy experts recommend disabling your Google or Apple device’s internal ad ID, which allows third-party tracking on the majority of these devices for improved ad targeting.

For iPhone users, navigate to the Privacy settings and scroll down until you find Apple Advertising; from there, turn off Personalized Ads. If you have a more recent Android device, head over to thePrivacy section, look forAds, and you’ll be able to tapDelete Advertising ID.

Pinpoint or general

Regardless of whether you opt for an Android or iOS device, each offers options to accurately determine your whereabouts by integrating Wi-Fi connections along with information gathered from internal components like gyroscopes, accelerometers, and barometers. This capability aids in estimating the phone’s coordinates particularly when indoors where satellite signals might be obstructed.

A key benefit of using this feature is to precisely indicate to whoever you’re meeting up with, your exact whereabouts. According to Google, these location signals are designed to be random, ensuring they cannot be linked back to an individual user or their account. Nonetheless, you may prefer not to disclose your precise position to all applications, hence you have the option to instruct your device to merely broadcast its broad geographical area instead.

On Android devices, disable the Location Accuracy For all applications, set the preferences on iPhones. You can enable or disable these settings individually for each app.

Your Google account

In addition to managing app permissions on your device, you should also review your Google account settings. Following an investigative report by the Associated Press in 2018, which revealed that Google still collected user locations despite turning off "Location History," the company has been compelled to become more open regarding its location-tracking activities.

Head over to myaccount.google.com, and from there navigate to the Data & Privacy section. In this area, you’ll locate the Location History settings. Here, under recent updates, your location history automatically deletes itself after three months; however, you have the option to modify this default configuration.

Browsers

Well-known mobile web browsers such as Safari or Chrome might disclose your whereabouts, hence consider opting for a privacy-focused alternative like DuckDuckGo, Firefox Focus, or Ecosia which refrain from retaining data about you.

Should a privacy-conscious browser require access to your location via your IP address, it will seek your permission beforehand. Additionally, it provides an easy way for you to remove your cookies and other online activity data.

Find my device

Smartphones or tablets can likewise be located using Apple’s Find My or Google’s Find My Device services when trying to recover misplaced gadgets. If you believe an unauthorized person might have accessed your Apple or Google account, you should disable this tracking feature.

Block the signal

Certain cybersecurity sites suggest enabling airplane mode; however, since it does not necessarily disable every signal, relying solely on this method isn't advisable.

A signal-blocking Faraday pouch would be a more suitable option, however, ensure you verify that it effectively blocks all signals. Also remember, you will have to remove the device from the pouch each time you want to utilize it.

Tradeoffs

With numerous potential methods through which smartphones—and other gadgets such as smartwatches—can monitor our whereabouts, compiling a comprehensive checklist becomes quite challenging.

The standard interaction we have with apps, businesses, and platforms involves allowing them to monitor us, making it significantly more challenging for us to examine all the pathways through which our information is transmitted, as stated by Ruiz.

"The sad reality is that to completely halt this process, we must delve into our device settings and meticulously review every single application one by one, making personal choices about how these applications gather our location information," explained Ruiz. "Alternatively, we can switch off all forms of location tracking altogether," which might lead to issues such as needing to input addresses manually when using ridesharing services or lacking real-time guidance from map applications, he noted.

___

Do you believe there’s a technology subject that requires further explanation? Reach out to us at onetechtip@ap.org With your input for upcoming versions of One Tech Tip.