Today every smartphone uses navigation satellites, often from multiple orbital systems, in addition to cell phone towers, Bluetooth tracks, and Wi-Fi router locations to produce a terrifically accurate location.
My family’s iPhones are often tracked not only around our house, but also the ‘Find’ app is used, in each of the almost exact locations in our house within a few meters radius.
This can be too much when indicating your location to a third-party app, even once, but especially when the app is in the foreground or, in the case of rare apps, in the background.
In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple added a switch so you can choose between offering apps precise or “fuzzy” locations and, by extension, any third parties that apps can work with, who also receive location information.
When an app requests permission to track your location for the first time, pin it to the label that covers the map that appears in the dialog box. The map shows the exact location that would be shipped at that time.
Tap on Precision Pickup, and if it’s on, turn it off and the map now appears with a circle indicating the estimated area your phone would send instead.
You will receive this authorization notification again if you press “Authorize” once the next time you run the app and it asks you again; with any other option, you will not be prompted this way again.
However, you can change the accuracy at any time for any app via “Settings> Privacy> Location services”. Tap on the listed app and you can turn on or off the “Localized location” feature.
