What you can do to prevent Google—and others—from tracking your phone
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2018/08/14
What you can do to prevent Google—and others—from tracking your phone
It’s natural to want to limit the ways your smartphone tracks your location. Of course, carrying a device whose main purpose is to connect to networks—like through Wi-Fi, GPS, cell towers, and Bluetooth—and at the same time expecting to keep your location private can be tricky.
This topic was thrown into sharp relief by a report by the Associated Press that pointed out that even if a setting called “Location History” is switched off in your Google account, that company may still have a record of where you’ve been physically, thanks to another setting called “Web & App Activity.”
A Google spokesperson confirmed the location issue in an emailed statement: “Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time. As the [AP] story notes, we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions."
If you want to minimize the extent to which your phone tracks you, here are some basic actions to help protect your privacy.