How to Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location

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.

At least 75 companies receive people’s precise location data from hundreds of apps whose users enable location services for benefits such as weather alerts, The New York Times found. The companies use, store or sell the information to help advertisers, investment firms and others.

You can head off much of the tracking on your own device by spending a few minutes changing settings. The information below applies primarily to people in the United States.

How can I tell if apps are sharing my location?

It’s difficult to know for sure whether location data companies are tracking your phone. Any app that collects location data may share your information with other companies, as long as it mentions that somewhere in its privacy policy.

But the language in those policies can be dense, confusing or outright misleading. Apps that funnel location details to help hedge funds, for instance, have told users their data would be used for market analysis — or simply for “business purposes.”

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.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/prevent-location-data-sharing.html