How to Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location

In the New York Times, story by reporters Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer. Full story here, with additional directions. Accompanying article here.

Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret

Hundreds of apps can follow your movements and share the details with advertisers, retailers and even hedge funds. Here’s how to limit the snooping.

Which apps gather and share location?

There isn’t a definitive list. Our tests identified instances of certain apps collecting precise location data and passing it to other companies in the moment. But apps can also gather and save the data, and not sell it until later — something tests wouldn’t catch. Your best bet is to check your device to see which apps have permission to get your location in the first place.

The apps most popular among data companies are those that offer services keyed to people’s whereabouts — including weather, transit, travel, shopping deals and dating — because users are more likely to enable location services on them.

 

How do I stop location tracking on iOS?

Some apps have internal settings where you can indicate that you don’t want your location used for targeted advertising or other purposes. But the easiest method is to go through your device’s main privacy menu.

 

In the device’s privacy settings, apps provide brief explanations of how they will use location data. Do not rely on these descriptions to tell you whether the location data will be shared or sold. The Times found that many of these descriptions are incomplete and often don’t mention that the data will be shared.

 

If you want to disable location tracking entirely, toggle the “Location Services" setting to off. With location services switched off entirely, you may not be able to use certain services, such as finding yourself on a map.

 

If you have apps you no longer use, you may want to delete them from your device.

 

How do I stop it on Android?

These instructions are for recent Android phones; Google provides more instructions here.

 

Google, a prominent collector of location data, lets users delete a segment of that information called their Location History. To do that, go to this page, then hit the Delete Location History button. Click it again when prompted. You can delete another segment of location data associated with your Google account by logging in and going to My Activity. Then click on Activity Controls and turn off Web & App Activity.