How to Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location

[LSW]

To begin with you should have a look at this article to understand what kind of data is being processed and that even if it does not use you name it can be traced to you. Once you understand the issue/threat, the follow up article used for the title will show you how to help protect yourself with the primary phone types. They do state that the article is based on the US, but do not make the mistake of thinking that whatever country you live in, you are safe.:

Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html

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The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.

 

One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night.

 

Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, a 46-year-old math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.

 

 

An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Ms. Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.

 

How to Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/technology/prevent-location-data-sharing.html

Quote

At least 75 companies receive people’s precise location data from hundreds of apps whose users enable location services for benefits such as weather alerts, The New York Times found. The companies use, store or sell the information to help advertisers, investment firms and others.

 

You can head off much of the tracking on your own device by spending a few minutes changing settings. The information below applies primarily to people in the United States.