LONDON — Smartphones are useful tools for everyday life, but they’re privy to nearly everything about you, including all the places you’ve been — if you let them.
When you use a map app to find the new restaurant your friend recommended, or your phone’s browser to check the price of something you saw while window shopping, you could be unwittingly allowing your phone to track your location and share that information with others.
Phones use various signals to find your location, including cell tower pings, Wi-Fi access points, Bluetooth and GPS.
Sometimes your phone needs to know your location to provide a useful service, like telling the Uber driver where to pick you up. But in other cases, there’s little justification for tracking your whereabouts, which then can be exploited by apps, ad services or even hackers.
“From fitness tracking to navigation, every location ping potentially reveals details about our routines and movements – which could be risky in the wrong hands,” said Darren Guccione, CEO of Keeper Security. “Users should turn on location tracking only when necessary, such as during navigation, emergencies or sharing updates with trusted contacts, and disable it immediately afterward.”
Experts warn location data could be used to track people who visit abortion clinics. Or “a disgruntled ex could use location sharing to stalk someone, or a current, abusive partner could force you into location sharing as a means of control,” said David Ruiz, senior privacy advocate at cybersecurity company Malwarebytes.
Here are some tips to make sure location tracking is kept to a minimum:
Head to your phone’s control panel to check permissions.
iPhone users can go to the Privacy & Security tab, and then to Location Services to check settings for individual apps. It’s not a good idea to let apps always use your location in the background, according to cybersecurity experts. Instead, get the app to either ask first before using your location, use it only while you’ve got the app open, or even never let it use your location.
While you’re in Location Services, you might notice little arrows that indicate which apps have used your location. Purple means recently, while grey indicates the past 24 hours.
It’s a little different for Android phones because there are so many different versions by various device manufacturers. In general, go to settings, and then tap the Location icon, which lets you turn it on or off for all apps.
To tweak settings for individual apps, tap App location permissions, where you’ll get choices similar to those in iOS.
Apple has other tools to cut down on third-party tracking that might include location information. On the iPhone’s Privacy & Security setting, under the Tracking tab, there’s a toggle to Allow Apps to Request to Track. With this switched off, any new app requests will be automatically denied and they will also be stopped from accessing your phone’s ad identifier.
Privacy experts recommend blocking your Google or Apple device’s in-house ad identifier, which enables third-party tracking on most devices for better ad targeting.
On iPhones, go to the Privacy setting then scroll down to Apple Advertising, and then switch off Personalized Ads. On newer Android phones, go to the Privacy setting, then to Ads, where you can tap Delete Advertising ID.
Whether you use Android or iOS, they both have settings to allow precisely pinpointing your location by combining wireless signals with data from onboard sensors such as the gyroscope, accelerometer and barometer. This helps to estimate the phone’s position if, for example, you’re inside a building blocking a GPS signal.
One reason to use this function is to show someone you’re meeting exactly where you are. Google says its signals are randomized so they can’t be associated with a specific person or account. In any case, you might not want every app to know this, so you can tell your phone to only share its general location.
On Android phones, turn off the Location Accuracy setting for all apps. On iPhones, switch it on or off for individual apps.
Along with app permissions for your device, it’s also a good idea to check your Google account. Google was forced to be more transparent about its location tracking practices after a 2018 Associated Press story that found the company continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history.”
Go to myaccount.google.com and then to the Data & Privacy section, where you’ll find the Location History controls. Under recent changes, the history will be deleted after three months, though you can change that default setting.
Popular smartphone web browsers like Safari or Chrome could give away your location, so try using one that that doesn’t store information about you, like DuckDuckGo, Firefox Focus or Ecosia.
If a privacy-focused browser needs to access your location through your IP address, they will ask first. It will also let you easily delete your cookies and other web browsing data.
Phones or tablets can also be tracked with Apple’s Find My or Google’s Find My Device features for recovering lost devices. You can turn this feature off if you think someone has gained access to your Apple or Google account.
Some cybersecurity websites recommend using airplane mode, but it doesn’t always shut off all signals so you shouldn’t rely on it.
A signal-blocking Faraday pouch would be a better bet, but be sure to test it to make sure it’s actually jamming all signals. And, keep in mind, you’ll need to take the device out of the bag to use it.
There are so many possible ways for smartphones — and other devices like smartwatches — to track our location that it’s hard to provide an exhaustive checklist.
Our default relationship with apps, companies, and platforms is for them to track us, “which absolutely makes it harder for us to scrutinize all the channels through which our data is being sent,” said Ruiz.
“The unfortunate truth is that, to shut everything down, we have to go into our device settings and check each app, line by line, and make individual decisions for how those apps collect our location data,” said Ruiz. “It’s either that, or turn off all location data entirely,” which could result in inconveniences like having to manually enter your address on ride-hailing apps, or not getting live directions from mapping apps, he said.
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