The fact that most Google services are free is not new, nor is it new that this is possible thanks to the fact that get user data. For this reason, we always recommend that you take control of your mobile phone alone, with certain settings that will allow you to preserve your privacy.
There are three apps that significantly abuse permissions, access our location at will. These are the ones you see in the picture, although fortunately we can put obstacles in place so that they stop moving freely. We’ll tell you how to do it.
Why do these three apps track your location?
To function correctly and provide us with a service contextualized to our location, the mobile phone collects this information from the user. This is the main reason why we see location-based advertising and news of interest in sections like Discover related to our location.
This is almost inevitable in current smartphones – unless you opt for software without Google – and it really does not carry any risk, since our information is safe and protected by the company. However, some users choose to delete these apps from their mobile phone, via more advanced methods.
Generally, as a general rule, we cannot uninstall them from our Android mobile, are system applications. We will therefore choose to restrict access to the location, which will be easy to do.
How to Restrict Location Access
With the Android Permissions Manager we have a powerful tool to tell each application: you do it, you don’t… Permission by permission, we can deny access to information as important as contacts or mobile camera. And localization is part of it, we explain how to do it with the three Discord applications:
- Go to “Settings” > “Applications”. From the list, find one of the three Google apps we mentioned.
- Then enter the “Permissions” section. Then tap “Location”. Disable access with the “Do not allow” option.
This shows how simple it is to block access to location. Even if it is necessary to comment a few asterisks: on the one hand, you will not be able to apply this change to Google Play Servicesand on the other hand, you will have to grant this authorization again so that they can work normally.
In case you can do without these applications (don’t do it with services or your mobile will start to break down) you can deactivate them. It comes in the same section, although depending on the manufacturer’s layer it will be called “Disable”, “Disable” and even “Disable”.
Remove all traces of your activity in Location History
Once we have partially blocked access to location by these three applications, we need to think about what to do with them the information they have recorded so far. This is what Google calls Location History, one of the “My Activity” sections.
By accessing this tool we can delete location timeline, in addition to deactivating it to prevent them from storing this data. To do this, simply follow these steps:
- Go to “My Activity” by following the link we left above.
- Click on “Location History” and on the next screen “Turn Off”.
- Once disabled, you can optionally delete all information from “Manage History”.
Disabling location has consequences
Although it seems to us that these are all advantages, deactivating our location has important consequences: you will lose the possibility of recovering your mobile if you lose it, your contacts will not be able to locate you, and in general you will have a less personalized.
Regardless, with all this in mind, we’ll keep these three “location-eating” apps at bay. Ultimately, use a smartphone involves certain concessionsespecially when they offer us such complete and useful services free of charge.
Cover image | Stable Diffusion XL with edition
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