If you’re a gamer, you’ll know that many games identify active players’ characters by hovering some sort of identifying “flag” over or alongside them.  Even in a crowded city scene, you can always follow your specific character by watching for their flag.  Which is great in a game, but not so much when it happens in the real world.  Yet our smartphones often act in the same way, constantly announcing to the world at large where we are and what we’re doing. 

Everyone from advertisers to your phone carrier to Apple and Google get in on the action, as well as potentially — and more worryingly — stalkers and vengeful exes, or criminals and scammers.  Escaping scrutiny altogether is an overwhelming task, but knowing how to turn off Tracking on iPhones or Android phones (and a few similar tweaks) can make you less visible. 

Tracking Isn’t Necessarily Malicious or Creepy …

It’s important to stress, right from the beginning, that your phone tracking you isn’t always a bad thing.  In fact, it’s absolutely mandatory for some features you probably use most days, like using your GPS to go somewhere, tagging a photo with its location or “checking in” from a specific location on one of your social media feeds. 

Simply providing service means that your phone carrier automatically knows where you are and where you use your phone.  The maker of your phone’s OS (Apple or Google) also must monitor your usage to at least some extent, simply to understand which parts of the OS are working for you and which need improving.  The apps you use and the sites you visit will usually want to know your location, at least in a general way, so they can offer services (and yes, ads) that are appropriate and useful to you. In the case of free-to-use apps or social media platforms it’s what makes that platform viable.  As long as your consent has been given, it’s perfectly ethical (and yes, we’ll come back to that momentarily). 

… Until It Isn’t

Tracking of phone users runs along a broad spectrum from unquestionably legitimate to outright malicious.  Even if on the legitimate side, some advertisers are more intrusive than others. 

And, on the malicious end of the spectrum, it’s entirely possible that you may be personally targeted by a stalker or an abusive partner. 

Making yourself less easy to track can mitigate all of those risks, to some degree.  The logical starting point is to turn off your phone’s location services when they’re not in use, because that’s Ground Zero for tracking. 

How to Turn Off Tracking on iPhone

Apple’s iOS gives you a lot of control over your Privacy, should you choose to exercise it.  The simplest starting point for telling your phone to not let tracking happen is to turn off location services entirely.  To do that, you’d go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, and then Location Services.  Tap the toggle to turn them off. 

… except that if you do that, none of the apps that legitimately use location services will work (it’s like using a hammer to swat a mosquito).  So a better alternative is to leave the main Location Services toggle enabled, and then restrict how they’re used. 

If you look at the list of apps on this screen, you’ll see whether (and when) they’re allowed to use your location settings.  They’ll say things like “Never,” “While Using” or “Always,” all of which are pretty self-explanatory.  If there’s an app that you don’t think ever needs your location, set it to Never.  For just about everything else, While Using is your best option.  It means an app that legitimately needs your location can access it while it’s active, but only then (so it can’t get up to anything without you knowing).  Always should be reserved for apps that a) absolutely need location services; and b) you use constantly. 

You’ll also see a Precise Location toggle among your Location Services settings.  This uses extra information, like which Wi-Fi networks are within range, to pinpoint your location in much finer detail than GPS alone could muster.  Turning that off will make you much, much harder to physically locate. 

Turn Off Tracking on Android Phones

There’s a similar set of controls for Android phones, but you may find you need to do a little more work to find and use them.  Unlike Apple, Google doesn’t choose to exercise control over every aspect of an Android phone’s interface.  Instead, phone carriers or individual manufacturers have the option of providing alternative apps for some purposes, and alternative interfaces that can differ from the way things are done in stock, or “vanilla” Android.  In short, if the instructions that follow don’t seem to apply to your phone, visit the manufacturer’s (or phone carrier’s) site for instructions that are specific to your model. 

To turn off Location Services entirely, go to Settings and then Privacy and Safety.  On most phones you’ll see a menu option labeled Location Settings (on your specific phone it might just say Location).  Tap that, and then tap the toggle to turn Location off.

Android’s equivalent to iOS’ Precise Location toggle is back in the Location Settings menu, where you’ll see an option called Locating Method.  The default is GPS, Wi-Fi and Mobile Networks, which is the most permissive and can often identify your location within a few yards.  Tap that setting and then GPS Only, which is the least permissive. 

If you’d like to leave the master Location Settings turned on, and manage access on an app-by-app basis, go back to Privacy and Safety and choose App Permissions.  Scroll down the list of apps and tap each one in turn to control its use of your location.  The settings are wordier than those on iPhones, but essentially the same (“Allowed all the time,” “Allowed only while in use” and “Never Allowed”).  Again, Allowed only while in use is the most appropriate setting for most apps. 

In Android, individual apps can also ask for your precise location, prompting you to turn on your Wi-Fi or “Improve location accuracy.”  You can decide whether or not to do that on a case-by-case basis. 

Control Who You Share Your Location With

So far we’ve talked about tracking that’s involuntary or at best semi-voluntary, but you also choose to deliberately share your location with people, sometimes.  These may be real-world friends and family or coworkers, but sometimes it might be everyone on your social-media friends list.  It’s worthwhile to periodically take a look at those settings, and periodically stop sharing with anybody who doesn’t need to know where you are.  It’s essentially the human equivalent of reviewing your apps’ permissions. 

Location sharing on iOS

In current versions of iOS it’s easy to find out who you’re sharing your location with.  Just go to Settings, then Privacy & Security and tap Safety Check.  When the Safety Check opens up, tap Manage Sharing & Access.  From there you’ll just need to follow the on-screen instructions, and the app will walk you through a review of the people (and apps!) who get to track you.  So yes, this is also an alternative to the manual location control we’ve already described. 

Location sharing on Android

On Android the app you’ll usually use to share your location is Google Maps (other apps might do that on a one-off basis, but usually only Maps will do it ongoingly).  Tap the icon to open Maps, and then tap your profile picture (if you don’t have a profile picture, it will just show your initial in a circle).  From that menu, tap Location Sharing and you’ll be shown a list of everyone you’re currently sharing your location with.  If anyone on that list strikes you as problematic (or just doesn’t need to know where you are), you can simply tap their profile and then tap Stop. 

For any other app that shares your location, the steps should be approximately the same (Google apps will follow a similar layout, third-party apps will be more variable). 

Tweak Your Advertising Settings as Well   

If advertising is your biggest phone-related beef, there are settings you can tweak to minimize your exposure to tracking from advertising companies.  iPhone users definitely have an advantage here: Apple uses privacy as a marketing ploy and doesn’t rely on advertising as a revenue stream, so it has an incentive to help you. 

Advertiser tracking on iOS

If an app developer on the Apple platform wants to track your activity across other sites and apps, it has to explicitly ask permission.  You can tap Allow or Ask App Not to Track, whichever you choose in that particular instance.  You can also go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, and finally Tracking, in order to review what permissions apps already have and change them if necessary.  If you want to nip the whole thing in the bud, you can turn off the Allow Apps to Request to Track option under Tracking. 

In this case, you don’t have to worry about your app magically losing most of its features if you don’t allow tracking.  Apple forbids developers from that kind of hanky-panky if they want to stay in the App Store, despite significant pushback from big players like Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.  Meta has been sued by users for trying to finesse an end-run around Apple’s policies. 

Advertiser tracking on Android

Tracking is more deeply embedded in the Android ecosystem, because advertising is how Google makes the bulk of its revenue, and Google’s unmatched knowledge of its users is what drives those ad sales.  That knowledge comes from — you guessed it! — monitoring everything you do on your Android device. 

Even so, you can turn off the personalizations in your Google Account settings.  That removes one of Google’s legal justifications for tracking and retaining data, and helps improve your personal privacy.  To do this, tap Settings and then Google to view your Google Account settings.  Next, tap Ads.  You’ll see a toggle labeled Opt Out of Ad Personalizations.  Tap it to turn it off.  That tells Google to stop profiling you in future. 

To wipe the slate clean of information the company has already gathered, scroll down and tap Reset Advertising ID.  Each user has a personal Google advertising ID (don’t you feel special, knowing that?) and this erases any existing tracking data associated with your account.  To be clear, you’ll still see ads. They won’t be personalized for you (which, at least theoretically, is a benefit) but that personalization comes at a cost in privacy.  How you draw that balance is entirely up to you. 

Other Steps to Thwart Tracking and Improve Privacy

Aside from these OS-specific measures, there are lots of other things you can do to tip the balance back in favor of privacy.  A selection of them, in no particular order, includes: 

Look at your browser’s cookie settings

Every site you visit puts a small file called a “cookie” on your devices.  One of the main uses for those cookies is to track your activities across the online world, so controlling how those are used is important to your online privacy.  The same pop-up banners we’ve just discussed will often give you some control over cookie use, but your browser also has cookie-management features that can improve your privacy (especially when a site doesn’t let you opt-out). 

If you search “manage cookies in [your mobile browser’s name],” you’ll find a detailed description of how to selectively delete them or manage when and how they’re accepted.  These are the instructions for Chrome, for example. 

Use a privacy-oriented browser

Alternatively, you could use a browser with a stronger up-front focus on privacy.  That will never be Chrome, because of Google’s reliance on advertising revenue, but Firefox and Brave are both good browsers with a privacy focus.  The Tor browser is even more so, but is complicated to use and probably not worth the effort unless you seriously need to be incognito online. 

Use a non-tracking search engine

Very few of us use anything other than Google or Bing to search for things online (Russia’s Yandex and China’s Baidu are big in their own markets, but only in their own markets).  Google and Microsoft are keenly interested in what you do online, of course, and harvest a lot of revenue from the data generated by your searches.  If you’d rather avoid that, consider using a non-tracking search alternative (there are several paid and free alternatives, of which DuckDuckGo is the best known). 

Protect yourself against malware

To this point we’ve talked about the legitimate kind of online tracking, but of course the illegitimate kind is a threat as well.  Protect yourself against that by choosing and using a good antivirus/antimalware app.  Another key step is always applying OS updates as soon as they’re released, because fixing newly-discovered vulnerabilities is one of the big reasons for those updates. 

Consider using a VPN

One of the very best ways to protect your privacy online is through the use of a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which conceals your online browsing (and even your geographic location) from the sites you visit and the broader internet, as a whole.  Installing and using one requires a modest level of expertise, but most people can figure it out. 

There’s always Airplane Mode

Finally, if you find yourself in a scenario where you want to drop entirely off the grid for a little while, switching your phone to Airplane Mode is a pretty effective move.  You won’t be able to use your phone until you turn it off, but by disabling everything it makes you more or less untrackable for the short term.  It’s a handy defense against stalkers, abusive partners or anyone else who might be trying to locate you right this minute. 

Privacy vs. Convenience: It’s Your Call

The only way to be really invisible and anonymous in our online society is … well, to stay offline.  That’s a solution that appeals to a small number of people, but it’s very much a niche option.  For the rest of us, privacy and convenience exist on a continuum: The more of one you want, the less of the other you’ll get. 

One of our key goals here at the blog is to give you the information you need in order to make (and act on) those decisions.  Each of the options we’ve discussed here can help you move the needle toward privacy, but it’s entirely up to you how much thought and effort you want to put into it (and what compromises you’re willing to accept in exchange for more privacy). 

The important thing is that you’re informed, and helping you locate the information you need to lead a safe, confident online life is what Spokeo’s all about.  

Sources:

• Apple Support – Control the Location Information You Share on iPhone
• Apple Support – Turn Location Services and GPS On or Off on Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch
• Google Account Help – Manage Your Android Device’s Location Settings
• Google Account Help – Choose Which Apps use Your Android Phone’s Location
• Apple Support – Manage Information Sharing With Safety Check on iPhone
• Google Maps Help – Share Your Real-Time Location with Others
• Financial Times – Meta and Alphabet Lose Dominance over US Digital Ads Market
• Ars Technica – Facebook Users Sue Meta for Bypassing Beefy Apple Security to Spy on Millions
• Goodcore – Key Principles of GDPR: The Ultimate Guide to Data Privacy
• Google Chrome Help – Clear, Allow, and Manage Cookies in Chrome