On a long journey to a very far Mediterranean town via plane, you need to go with some things- a human being to share the experience with, some bikinis, a book and maybe your headphone. But what you might not realize is that Google is journeying with you as well.
It is no longer news that Google monitors our activities via mobile devices, smart devices and laptops, with its software on eighty six percent of smartphones worldwide.
With lots of court cases and rampant discussions about how the grandmasters of tech are seeing all we do, lots of phone users have given up, believing there is nothing they can do to stop Google’s data collecting.
But, as more noise is being made about how these technology companies are tracking our data, there are features built into our mobile devices that lots of phone owners have no idea how to disable – or the reason why they should.
The Other Timeline
One of this features is the Google Maps Timeline, which is a running log of every location you head to that is monitored and gotten through Google Maps.
When activated, the feature gets data from several sources like GPS, WiFi, phone sensors like gyroscopes, accelerometers, for the creation of logs location plus a displayed maps of your routes. Dates and times are added, not excluding all pictures you snapped and uploaded to Google Photos when you were there.
This Timeline can be located on mobile and desktop when you open Google Maps and click the 3 horizontal lines in the top left corner. Tap Timeline, click Calendar to choose a particular day and your data will be visible.
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Me, My Phone And Google
To confirm how your iPhone has monitored these data, head to Settings, choose Privacy and then choose Location Services. The applications that are activated to turn your raw location data into useful information will be visible, and if the feature is turned on already on your device, a green toggle will be seen.
Swipe down to System Services and locate Significant Locations, which aids your iOS device to know about locations that are vital to you, according to the number of times the visits happened. Verification of your ID through Touch ID or a passcode will now be necessary.
Right there, you can have more knowledge about your behavior in certain locations you visited by tapping them one by one. The time you used during the visit will be revealed plus how you reached there if Google has that information.
Google says, “you can edit specific entries from your Location History, delete information from ranges in time or delete all of your Location History data. Your Timeline is private, so only you can see it”. If your device is presently storing this info, you might’ve hurriedly agreed to it when you first purchased the iOS device.
To be fair, there are some apparent advantages to logging your locations, even if it is just for a short period of time, it gives you the opportunity to see how everything panned out after a memorable outing.
But still, with the reports of these huge technology companies turning our raw data into useful information, limiting this feed of info could be the right thing to do.
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Logging Out?
For an Android device, open Google Maps, click Settings. Click Maps History, click the menu button in the top-right and click Activity Controls. Swipe down to Location History and disable it. On the next screen, click Pause.
To restrict location monitoring on your iPhone, head to Settings and swipe down to Privacy. Just choose Location Services and disable it.
But nothing is still guaranteed after all that.
An AP report revealed last year that Google does not stop logging activity plus location via other applications even when Location Services is disabled.
As per the report, whoever owns an iPhone or Android device running Google Maps are exposed, which means billions of people are at risk of data mining.
You can get rid of your Google account totally or if that is considered desperate by you, simply search your Google Account settings page “Web and App Activity” and disable it.
By so doing, Google will be unable to save a snapshot of where you have visited from Maps data plus they no longer have access to browser searches that reveals your precise GPS coordinates.
