Step up your privacy

The final section of your Mac’s Security & Privacy System Preferences relates to all aspects of your personal privacy and includes Location Services, which allows apps to determine your location, as well as a list of all of the apps that have access to other personal information. Go through all of these options carefully.

1 location services

Click on ‘Location Services’ and untick any apps, particularly third-party apps, that you don’t wish to share your location with. You can untick the ‘Enable Location Services’ option to lock down your location.

2 system services

Scroll down to the System Services option at the bottom of the Location

Services list and then click on the ‘Details’ button. Here you can prevent certain System Services from determining your location.

3 clear locations

Your Mac learns places that you visit frequently and updates useful locationrelated information. If this makes you feel uneasy, click on ‘Details’ next to Significant Locations and click ‘Clear History’.

4 Activity indicator

If you want a heads-up every time that your Mac’s System Services requests your location then tick the ‘Show location icon in menu bar…’ option before clicking ‘Done’ to return to the Privacy settings.

5 work the list

You can now take time to work your way through the list of apps and services that request access to your information and deselect any that you want to deny. Pay close attention to apps you no longer use.

6 Analytics

The last option, Analytics, is there to help Apple and app developers improve their products and services automatically. To lock down your privacy, simply leave all of these options blank.