What is location tracking?
Not to scare you, but if your phone is connected to the internet, then its location can be tracked. Your phone will use a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, and/or carrier signals to get a good idea of your current location. At any given moment, a myriad of the apps on your phone know your exact location, and that’s scary to anyone. So, there are definitely apps out there that need your location for a good reason. However, not everyone wants their location tracked.
Disabling location access to specific apps
Right off the bat, the example screenshots were captured from a Pixel 6. So, if you’re using a different phone, there’s a chance that things will be slightly different for you. However, it’s going to be comparable. Apps that need access to your location will request permission before they can use it. Fortunately, you have the ability to deny the app that permission. Before an app can use your location, it will give you a popup of some kind with the option to either allow or deny access. Most popups will simply let you either allow or deny access. It’s like a simple yes or no question. If you don’t want to give the apps your location, you can choose to deny it.
If you’ve already given an app permission, and you want to disable it, it’s pretty simple to do so. Firstly, find the app on your home screen and hold your finger down on it. You’ll see a little popup appear with some options. Tap on the App Info button (if you don’t see the text, then look for the “!” in a circle). When you’re on the App Info page, scroll down to the Permissions section. There, you’ll see all of the permissions granted to that app. Tap on the Location button and you’ll be taken to another page. There, you’ll see the option to enable or disable the location permissions for that app. Select the Don’t Allow option and you’ll be done.
There’s another way
If you’re curious about which apps on your phone are using your location, there’s an easy way to check. Go to your settings and scroll down to the location section. When you tap on that section, most phones will show you a list of apps that require your location data. From there, you can tap on those apps and see whether they’ve been granted permission and disable them if you need to.
How to disable the location for your whole phone
Shutting off your location for specific apps is great if you want to micro-manage which apps use it. However, if you want your phone to disable location tracking as a whole, you can do that as well. Go to your settings and find the Location section again. There, you will see a toggle that will let you turn your location off for your whole device. No apps will be able to access your location.
If you want an even easier way, you can look at your quick settings. Access your notification shade and swipe down again. The buttons up top are your quick settings. Search through your quick settings and see if there’s one for your location. If so, tap on it to disable it.
Be careful about which apps you give location permission to
There are all sorts of apps on the Google Play Store, and several of them will ask for access to your location. Because of this, it’s important to know which apps to not grant access to. Giving your location data to the wrong app is extremely dangerous, for obvious reasons. So, before you grant an app access to your location, it’s important to know why the app needs your location. If you download an AR game like Pokemon Go, a map app, or any app that has a legitimate and sensible reason, then you should be fine. However, if you download an app that has no reason to access your location, then you’ll want to avoid it. If you download a stopwatch app, and it needs to know your location, that’s a bit of a red flag. Before you download an app, you can check out the permissions that it will require. In order to do this, find the app on the Google Play Store and go to the About this app section. Scroll all the way down until you see the Permissions button.
When you do that, you’ll see a page showing you all of the permissions that the app will need. If it needs your location data, you’ll want to be careful from that point on.
There are tons of ways to be safe on the Play Store
Disabling access to your location is only one way that you can stay safe on the Play Store. There are several other ways that you can avoid dangerous apps. You’ll want to look at all of the permissions that an app needs, not just the location. Also, you’ll want to read the reviews for an app. If it’s shady, you’ll be able to see it in the reviews. Also, be sure to avoid imposter apps that try to pass themselves off as official apps. You can read more on this here.
