Five Ways to Stop Your Phone Spying on You
It might sound like the stuff of James Bond, but your smartphone could actually be tracking you right now. Fortunately, you can take back control of your privacy. This article looks at the ways in which your phone may be spying on you and at how you can stop your movements and data being tracked.
How is your phone spying on you?
There are various ways in which your smartphone is spying on your online and offline activities. These include through apps, location tracking and social media. If you want to stop or minimise your phone’s ability to spy on you, here are five things you can do:
1. Check your app permissions
Apps often request permission to access various features on your phone, such as the camera, location or contacts list. You are able to grant or deny the app access to the requested settings. To check or change permissions on an Android phone, head to Settings and to Apps. Here, you can scroll through all your downloaded apps and adjust the permissions. On an iPhone, go to Settings and Privacy.
2. Turn off location tracking
Google tracks your physical location using the Maps feature, with the stated aim of improving the user experience. However, if you want to prevent Google learning of your movements and whereabouts, you can turn off your location history. In your Google account, navigate to Data & Privacy and then to the “Things you’ve done and places you’ve been” section. Here, you can pause your location history and delete your Maps timeline.
3. Manage your privacy settings on social media sites
Social media sites collect all kinds of information on their users, including location history, purchase history, contacts and personally identifiable information. This information helps to build up customer personas that companies and third parties buy in order to target ads to a particular demographic. So, it is important to regularly review the privacy settings on all the social media apps you use to ensure you’re not sharing more than necessary.
4. Think twice before using your phone’s voice assistant
Voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri are designed to make users’ lives easier. However, they come with privacy concerns. Using these assistants can give your phone access to the information you reveal, again helping advertisers personalise their marketing content. Check the privacy settings on your phone’s voice assistant and even consider disabling the function and microphone access.
5. Be aware of apps collecting and sharing practices
Protect yourself by deleting unused or old apps and only download apps from trusted sources. Beside, harmful and malicious apps, you should also pay attention to apps collecting and sharing practices that keep users’ privacy at heart. Always check the apps’ privacy policy to find out whether the data you share with them will be kept within the app or shared with third parties, which may include data brokers.
Although these steps are going to help you decrease your digital footprint, it won’t be enough. Personal information is widely available data brokers’s sites, which means you may have to opt out manually or get in touch with a third-party company specialising in data removal.
