Do you know what happens to location awareness on your smartphone?
A new report claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention purchased location information collected from tens of millions of phones with the goal of tracking compliance with Covid-19 restrictions, as well as other potential purposes. And as you can imagine, it raises considerations about what teams can access the knowledge produced through our smartphones and what they plan to use that knowledge for.
The report, published through Vice’s Motherboard, alleges that the CDC purchased location knowledge from knowledge broker SafeGraph, whose activities proved debatable enough to ban Google’s Play Store last year. Other people visiting K-12 schools, Vice’s report also states that the CDC planned to use their purchased knowledge for reasons unrelated to the Covid pandemic.
Specifically, documents received through Vice through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed 21 potential use cases cited through the CDC. Most appear to be similar to Covid, but some cite more generic “research topics of interest” for chronic disease prevention, physical activity, and herbal mobility disasters. “The mobility knowledge received under this contract will be available for use throughout the CDC and will help many of the CDC’s priorities,” a CDC document quoted through Vice said.
Given government policies, the covid pandemic has generated remarkable opposition: the anti-vaccination movement has leveraged any controversy over the covid vaccine, genuine or imagined, to fuel its demands and the political right has seized on vaccination mandates as a way to provoke its base. on government overreach ahead of this fall’s election: CDC reports paying for tracking data are likely to be controversial. Location data may not be named at first, but in the wrong hands it can be used with other available data to identify users faster
If that’s not enough for you, a Vice report on SafeGraph’s information-gathering activities states that the company sells information similar to abortion clinic visits. The information includes where other people came from to get to the clinic, how long they stayed, and where they went after visiting that location.
SafeGraph’s report on visits to abortion providers comes amid reports that the U. S. Supreme Court has been able to visit abortion providers. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security is about to announce a resolution repealing Roe v. Wade. Wade, the precedent that provides federal protections for abortion. Roe’s repeal will set the stage for individual states to ban the medical procedure altogether. , which can force other people to leave their home state for treatment.
After the article’s publication, SafeGraph said it would avoid promoting location awareness in a similar way to family circle centers making plans.
Either way, those two reports highlight a non-unusual truth about the phones we carry in our pockets. They gather a lot of knowledge about our whereabouts, and most of the time they do it without us knowing.
In recent years, Apple and Google, the creators of the two most popular software platforms for smartphones, have taken steps that give you more control over your location and limit the information apps can share and ultimately sell to others. But managing those personal tastes can be time-consuming, and those restrictions only go so far. After all, a mapping program that is denied access to your location wouldn’t be very effective in helping you navigate or locate nearby businesses.
Still, it’s a smart concept to check your location permission to see which apps are accessing your whereabouts. Here’s an overview of what you can handle.
If you upgraded to iOS 15, and you have an iPhone purchased in the last six years, you’ve probably done so, go to the Settings app, tap Privacy, and then choose Location Services.
On the next screen, you can scroll through a list of apps to see what their location permissions are for each. Tap the app to set the permission to Never, As long as you use the app. You can also specify that an app ask you for location permission the next time you release it.
The Location Services segment in Settings includes other interesting information. Arrows in other apps can tell you which ones have accessed your location information: the purple arrow means they’re recent, while the gray arrow means they’ve been in the last 24 hours.
From the Privacy page in settings, you can also access the app’s privacy report via a link at the back of the screen. The app’s privacy report tells you how apps access your data. In addition to location, you can also get data about who is accessing the camera, microphone, and other places. Armed with this data, you can manage or even revoke permissions.
Android is a bit more complicated, given that other phones use other versions of Google’s operating system. Google has commands to manage location settings for other versions of Android, but in Android 12, it goes to the Settings and Location app.
From there, tapping App Location Permissions tells you which apps have access to your location and access point. Tapping on an individual app allows you to override permissions. As with iOS, Android has settings forever, never and only when you use the app. You can also imply that the app asks you for permission every time you release it.
In addition to device permissions, you need to verify your Google account, especially if you are using Google Maps. Location data from Google points of sale anywhere you pass with any mobile device connected to your Google Account with location history and location update enabled. Google uses this information to offer personalized maps and recommendations, as well as real-time traffic data. (Oh, and you also get more personalized ads. ) But you may have reasons to let this data drag on.
From your Google account, you can turn off location tracking, either for your entire account or for individual devices connected to that account. In addition, you can manage the location history stored in your account, either by setting up an automatic deletion feature that periodically cleans your history, or by manually deleting individual days. You can delete your location history through the Google Maps app or in a browser, with Google providing commands in any direction.
While proper maintenance of location history is recommended, it may not prevent each and every application from collecting information about you. (You can turn off location tracking altogether, but this will restrict your phone’s capabilities. )
Vice’s two reports on who uses your data are likely to draw more attention to what exactly your smartphone can compare to other people, while also increasing pressure on Apple, Google, and phone makers to make data control features even smoother.
Here’s how to disable location on Android completely.
Philip Michaels is editor-in-chief of Tom’s Guide. He has been covering the private generation since 1999 and in construction when Steve Jobs first brought the iPhone. It has been comparing smartphones since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, and has been tracking phone carriers and smartphone plans since 2015. It has solid reviews about Apple, the Oakland Athletics, old videos, and smart butchery techniques. Follow it in @PhilipMichaels.
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