Privacy tips from Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson about smartphone tracking and google maps tracking and how to take your life off the map.
Search behemoth Google tracks the history of locations you visit, search for and in some cases show a trail of spots you’ve reviewed creating a digital breadcrumb trail of your real life footsteps on Google Maps. Unless you turn it off, this data mining of your privacy will continue.
Google is not alone, the world’s most popular smartphone, the Apple iPhone similarly stores your location history. Now you have the power to. Here are some tips to win back some of your privacy and freedom.
See your Google Maps history
- Launch the Google Maps app and sign in
- Tap the menu in the upper right indicated by your initial or photo
- Select Settings
- Then tap Maps history
- Next, take it a step toward better privacy. Delete Maps history. You can delete places from your Maps history manually and set it to Auto-delete and not save
- Under the Maps Activity title, tap Controls
- In the Web & App Activity setting, select to Turn off
