Yous're probably aware that your devices are capable of giving away their positions. If your device is lost or stolen, these features can exist used to recover them. If you lot have the devices with yous, they can let your friends and family know where y'all are---likewise as some applications and websites.

Many question the security and privacy risks of these features. Others praise their utility. Understanding how you feel about these features and how you cull to apply them is easier when you understand how they work.

So, how does your mobile device determine and share a location?

How Does Your Device Know?

There a number of different ways that your device location tin be determined and shared. Some of them accept to exercise with networks that information technology may be connected to.

Your Internet Connections

Mobile devices that can connect to the internet accept an Cyberspace Protocol address. IP addresses are assigned past the internet service provider (Isp), and they're actually super like shooting fish in a barrel to find. Call back of IP addresses like telephone numbers but for the cyberspace.

what is my ip address

If you're agape of revealing your IP address, at that place are a couple of things that you can exercise like employing a VPN or but not connecting your mobile device to a Wi-Fi connexion.

Your mobile devices can all the same give away your position if you have Wi-Fi turned off but your data turned on. This works similarly to a Wi-Fi connection, but a cellular network provider creates the connection rather than your ISP, gaining access to your data in the process.

GPS Data

GPS determines a device'due south position using satellites. As a result, it doesn't require internet service and works pretty much anywhere. So, if your phone isn't connected to Wi-Fi or data, information technology may notwithstanding be giving away your location.

GPS information is used by both Android Location Services and Apple tree Location Services. 3rd-party apps using APIs from these platforms can likewise access this information when yous apply those apps. You tin turn down the permissions for most of these apps individually when y'all open them, or in the app settings. You tin can also disable your device location in the settings.

If your location data is turned off, your provider tin make that data available upon request. This may be washed if your device is lost or stolen, or if you phone call an emergency number.

Accidental Disclosure

In this high-tech earth, it can be easy to forget the simple things. Y'all can turn off your device location all yous want, but remember that photos that you lot postal service or information that you lot share can also give away your location.

Is Location Data a Practiced Thing?

You can't turn your phone's location data off entirely but you can choose who has access to it.

Some people take drastic measures to protect their security information. Others literally want people to know where they are. So, is location information a expert thing, or not?

Location Information Is Your Friend

Giving at least some apps permission to utilise your device location does have advantages. This article has already mentioned lost or stolen devices and helping first responders or law enforcement respond to an emergency. However, there are other applications as well.

Services like Google can use your precise location to offer you information on points of interest, transportation, and weather condition in your area. They also use aggregate information to predict things like traffic and inflow times when you use location services.

If you lot want friends or family unit to know your location but not others, consider sharing your location straight with those select people through your Google Profile rather than through social media platforms.

Apps like Snapchat using Geofilters can too make photo opportunities even more unique past giving you customization options that are only bachelor in specific locations.

Location Data Is Not Your Friend

A lot of people are agape of location data. For most people, there's not actually anything to be agape of.

For i thing, there's so much location information out there that for any ane person to exist singled out would exist practically impossible. Even if that wasn't the instance, services like Apple and Google Location Services anonymize data when presenting aggregates.

That means that the simply location data that you should be afraid of is location data that you enter into apps yourself or the apps that you give access to. Not only are these organizations potentially less trustworthy, but this is also the location information that is about readily associated with you personally and not anonymized.

For example, social media sites that show your location to "friends" can give your location away to people that you'd rather non see as well. Some social media sites may also use your location to practise things like target advertisements, a practice that some people are opposed to.

Furthermore, streaming sites and other content providers use geo-restrictions that limit bachelor content based on your location. Y'all can unremarkably go past geo-restrictions with a VPN.

Location Information is Complicated

The bad news is that you tin can't run from your location data without leaving your phone at abode. The good news is that yous don't have to.

Being mindful of the permissions that you requite to private apps is a much more efficient method of protecting your location than leaving your telephone at dwelling house or refusing to connect to the internet. And that's a adept affair because some of the services offered by location data, like directed ad, are appreciated by i person and despised by the next.

While there are those who categorically despise the idea of location information and location sharing, like whatsoever engineering science, information technology isn't inherently positive or negative.

Your Device Location and You lot

The only location sharing that you can't turn off allows emergency services to trace your call.

Your mobile devices accept a number of ways to know and share locations. Which method they use depends on the device, what connections it has access to, and what apps have access to those networks and the device'south location data.

Your internet connection, mobile data connection, and GPS are the three principal ways that your device can know and share your location. While some of these tin exist turned off manually, that your device tin can requite abroad its location has become a simple fact of life.

Prototype Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/flickr

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About The Author

Johnathan Jaehnig (118 Manufactures Published)

Jon Jaehnig is a freelance author/editor interested in exponential technologies. Jon has a BS in Scientific and Technical Communication with a minor in Journalism from Michigan Technological University.

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