How to stop your phone from tracking your every move
Did you know that some companies are using your smartphone to track you throughout the day? And quite often you will have agreed to this personal surveillance simply by agreeing to the terms and conditions of using a service.
If you are worried about the likes of Facebook and Google using your phone to keep tabs on you, there are some steps you can take to take back ownership of your personal data and privacy.
How to protect your privacy
- Turn off location history
- Delete your location history
- Delete apps that you no longer use from your device
- Avoid apps that demand access to a huge amount of personal data (e.g. Facebook Mobile). Instead you can access these services via a browser with a private mode
- Check the default settings of all the apps you use.
However, when you turn off location history, Google still tracks your location when you use key services including Maps, search and weather. To prevent Google from doing this:
Android
- Go to Settings
- Select Google
- Select Google Account
- Select the Data & Personalisation
- Select Web & App Activity and toggle off
IPhone
- Go to your Google account activity controls page
- Toggle the Web & App Activity setting to off
If you really want to prevent your phone from tracking you, you should also turn off location services on your iPhone or Android device and only turn this back on when needed (e.g. when you want to use Google Maps). However in doing so your phone will feel a whole lot less useful.
Check out this page to see everywhere you have been with your phone.
If you are worried about how your data has been used and want to speak to one of our experts contact us today