How to Know if Someone Stops Sharing Their Location With You
This app is tracking your every move!—a hyperbolic headline I'thou certain we've all seen before. While the sentiment here is a over-the-top, it does raise an important question: do you know how private your location actually is?
Every day it'south something new. Today it's headlines about activity-tracking app Strava (iOS, Android) and how it "gave away" locations of secret army bases.
Despite my personal feelings on that detail story, information technology withal raises an important question: do you know how private your location data is? Do you lot even know which apps are tracking your location and sharing it publicly?
Everything Is Public, Until it Isn't
The accented outset and foremost rule where digital privacy is concerned: assume that everything you exercise is public until yous ready it otherwise.
Sure, at that place are apps and networks out there that are private by default, but those are few and far between. And then you should always operate as if every app is watching—because they probably are. If you don't similar this, it's upwards to you to either modify these settings or stop using the network altogether.
While this is true of everything from the statuses you post on Facebook to the images on Instagram—things you may be okay with showing publicly—location data should require special attention from everyone. For example, if y'all utilise a fettle tracking app or device, you can almost guarantee that it's tracking your location, because that'south a staple function of such apps. In the example of Strava, which is primarily used by cyclists and runners, location tracking is cadre to the very middle of its utility as a service. Merely that doesn't mean you demand to share it publicly. And other apps may not exist so obvious as to what they're tracking (or why).
You May Not Care Now, But You Might One Day
If y'all consider the implications of sharing your location across various networks, you may be cool with it. Later on all, why exercise I care if my Facebook friends all know where I'm having dinner? I don't, considering I know those people.
Simply yous also have to consider future implications, because once location information is attached to a status update or tweet, it'southward always there (unless y'all delete that status later on). And if y'all alter your feelings on location privacy, that's a lot of data left out there that you'll have to hunt down and delete.
There are as well potentially darker implications hither. Let'southward say y'all share you lot location on a fettle tracking app. If you use this app over a menstruation of weeks or months, information technology wouldn't exist difficult for someone to larn your habits—not only where y'all live, but when you're likely to not exist home, or the path y'all take jogging at dark. Someone with sick intentions could easily use this data for very bad things.
For example, maybe you lot take an ex-turned-stalker—not a probable scenario, but common enough it does warrant at least some consideration. That person knowing your verbal location, habits, or where you can be establish could be detrimental to your well existence, fifty-fifty if it doesn't seem like a likely scenario correct now.
Now, am I suggesting that you should constantly look over your shoulder or alive in fearfulness of whatcould happen? Nearly definitely not. Just that you have to sometimes consider things past the obvious or beneath the surface. You should start by at least knowing what has access to your location.
And in the end, if yous're indifferent about location sharing or don't take a specific reason for keeping it enabled, maybe you should go ahead and turn it off.
What Has Admission to Your Location?
Regardless of what platform you lot employ (Android or iPhone), every app that you lot install and use has to request access to certain features—like Location. Only on a long enough timeline, y'all may stop using certain apps, but they could still be tracking your location. Fortunately, you lot can easily find a list of all the apps that have access to your location and turn them off every bit needed.
How to Find Apps with Location Permission on the iPhone
Go alee and jump into your device's Settings carte, then find the Privacy menu.
The height option here is Location Services, which will prove a list of every app that has admission to your location, and when it can use said feature. For case, if it says "Always", it can track your location at all times; if it says "While Using", it can only grab your location while the app is open up.
You don't necessarily demand to disable location admission for all these apps correct here—later all, like I said, some of those apps need location to exist useful. Only brand a note of each app that has access, and so skip to the next section, where we'll talk almost how to make certain that location isn't beingness fabricated public.
How to Observe Apps with Location Services on Android Oreo
Android Oreo makes it pretty piece of cake to find apps with location access. First, pull downwardly the notification shade and tap the gear icon to open up the Settings menu.
From there, find the Security & Location menu, then tap into the Location menu under the Privacy department.
Choose App-Level Permissions to see all the apps with location access.
You lot don't demand to disable location access for these apps just yet—subsequently all, they may demand that feature. Only write down the apps that have location permission, since you lot'll need them in the next section.
How to Observe Apps with Location Services on Android Nougat and Below
Older versions of Android accept Location Services tucked away in a slightly different carte. Become ahead and pull downwards the notification shade and tap the gear icon to head into Settings, then leap into the Apps menu.
Tap the gear icon in the top corner. Annotation: On Galaxy devices, you lot'll tap the three dots in the upper right corner.
From at that place, choose App Permissions, and so find the Location option.
Disabling these location services could dramatically impact a service's usefulness. For example, fitness trackers or weather applications are going to be mostly useless without proper location tracking. So don't necessarily disable location access here—read on to see how to make sure this data isn't public.
Brand Certain Your Location Isn't Being Shared
Checking location services on your mobile device is merely half the equation here, of course. You also need to consider your "needs" from particular networks—as I said, disabling location services on mobile tin dramatically decrease the usefulness of particular services.
For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a slew of other services probably have admission to your location on an account basis, which goes across individual app permissions. You'll desire to bank check your account settings on all these services and turn them off if information technology isn't necessary.
In Facebook, head into Settings > Account Settings > Location to find out if information technology's keeping track of where you lot become.
For Twitter, you'll notice this info in Settings and Privacy > Location and Proxy (Android Only).
Some apps—like Instagram—rely on your device's permission system to rail your location, so disallowing in on the device level will cake this info from being shared.
Go through the business relationship settings of every app you lot found in the terminal stride and endeavor to find a similar toggle—either for making that data private, or disallowing location admission birthday.
You may find that some services have really granular settings. Strava, for case, offers an Enhanced Privacy setting that gives you even more settings to tweak. That way, I can selection and choose who is allowed to see my activities; if I don't know someone (or at to the lowest degree know who they are), and then they don't go to see what I'm doing or where I'm riding. it also offers a feature chosen "Subconscious Locations," which allows users to hide specific addresses within a sure radius, so people can't see where I live.
But that's the matter: both of these features are disabled past default. It's my responsibility every bit a user of the service to enable these features—I have to have the privacy implications and my ain needs personally. You lot'll need to do the same with all the apps and services you apply.
This thought process should extend past apps, too. Fitness trackers and smartwatches are also key tools in keeping upwardly with your activities, and while they're generally governed by some sort of companion app on your smartphone, they likewise have to be considered. For example, if you passively use a step tracker on a smartwatch, or a fitness tracker, merely never open up the companion app on your smartphone, it could be "silently" uploading your tracked data somewhere. Is information technology public? Do you know? Now might exist time to accept a closer look.
So, all this is to say one thing: y'all tin can't expect privacy, because we live in an "opt-in by default" globe. Every bit users of specific devices and services, it's our individual responsibility to do our due diligence hither and protect what is rightfully ours. As represented by the recent armed forces base of operations debacle, sometimes the implications are more serious than you may realize.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/341021/do-you-realize-how-much-you-share-your-location/
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