Is Your Smartphone Tracking Your Every Move?
The general answer is “Yes!” One’s phone knows where he or she is at this moment. The phone’s GPS does that, as most people know. Location tracking is essential for directions – and it also helps big technology to sell things.
Many apps ask for more information than actually needed. That information can then be sent to companies who might use it for advertising. “Targeted advertising” is a massive phenomenon. Companies are eager to flood people’s screens with ads, which are primarily influenced by the users’day-to-day habits. Facebook,Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and many others make money from mobile ads, and they need users’information to power their data-mining machines.
And the big technology companies have a reasonable explanation to their practice. For example, Apple claims to track personal calls and emails to prevent fraud. Many people, however, consider this an invasion of privacy.
And yet no matter what device one uses, accessing the internet automatically subjects him or her to behavioral tracking. Google services have had come under fire for storing people’s location data – even if these people had tweaked the privacy settings on their iPhone or Android gadgets. In response, Google has revamped its ad settings to make it easier for users to understand and limit ad tracking.
This “tracking” thing is indeed bothersome, if not scary, but it’s not a hopeless situation. There are tools for opting out of personalized ad tracking. Google and Microsoft, for example, have account dashboards for privacy controls and for checking what it knows about its internet users.
Moreover, according to Kim Komando, in an article at www.usatoday. com, there are ways to avoid being subjected to the widespread “tracking” practice. Ending location tracking may sound extreme, Komado says, and most people may prefer to combat the ads themselves. iOS and Android provide built-in options to minimize and limit ad tracking. Likewise, Facebook has options for turning off behavioral tracking to keep it from following the user around the web.
Komado shares tips on how to significantly minimize, if not stop, ad tracking:
1.Tweak your phone’s location settings. Click “Settings.” Open the App Drawer and go to “Settings.” Sign in to your Google Account.
2.Limit ad tracking. Click on “Your personal info” in the “Personal info & Privacy” section. Go to “Privacy.” Scroll down and tap “Location.”
3.Stop Google from tracking your every move. On the left-hand pane, click on “Manage your Google Activity” and select “Go to Activity Controls.” Scroll down and tap “Google Location Settings.” Switch off “Location Services.”
4.Use a private browser on your phone. Scroll down to “System Services.” Tap “Location Reporting” and “Location History” and switch the slider to “off.”
5.Check your online accounts. Choose “Significant Locations” to see the logged record of where you’ve been; de-select this to turn it off. To delete your device’s location cache, tap “Delete Location History” at the bottom of the screen under “Location History.”
6.Opt out of ads. Repeat this process for each Google Account you have on your Android device.
7.Check your virtual assistants. Turn these off if they’re not necessary.
8.Control permissions on your apps. Android – Go to Settings >> Google >> Ads >> Toggle on “Opt out of ads personalization.”
Before installing apps, one shall always check the permissions required on the Google Play or Apple App Store app page. Android phones also gives a rundown of the permission requests upon installation of an app. iOS apps typically shows a permission access pop-up upon using a feature that requires specific access to one’s gadget.
The moment a user creates an account with a major company (like Google, Microsoft or Facebook) the gathering of data about one’s location, personality and preferences begins. The company’s algorithms start tracking the user’s every click, and data will be used for targeted ads or “relevant” posts.
Many computer users are familiar with private web browsers. Lesserknown are the browsers that allow one to search the internet on a mobile device anonymously. One such app is Mozilla’s free Firefox Focus app. This anonymous mobile web browser blocks advertising, analytics and social trackers by default. It also erases passwords and browsing history after each session.
Checking app permissions regularly is good practice. Not only will it give the user more privacy control and stop apps from potentially spying and abusing his or her trust, but it can also weed out apps that are continually running in the background, which can, in turn, improve the gadget’s battery life. The mobile versions of Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge also have incognito and InPrivate modes that one can use.