How to make sure you don’t accidentally share your location

Your devices and Apps really want to know where you are – to tell you the weather, recommend some restaurants you might like, or better target you with ads. Managing what to share and what not to share and when can quickly become confusing.

You may also have inconsistencies in the different location histories recorded by your devices: where you thought you had turned off and blocked location sharing but it’s still being tracked, or vice versa.

Here we’ll cover everything you need to consider when it comes to location tracking and hopefully make it easier for you along the way. Whether or not you want to grant access to your current environment, you should be able to control these settings, and not be caught unawares by additional options you may have missed.

How confusing it is to monitor the environment

What happens if you clearly remember to turn off location tracking on a device and your location is still showing up on the map? Or maybe you thought you might have abandoned the feature, but are seeing gaps in your local history? There are a few explanations, but basically you need to remember the different ways you access your environment: through your devices, your apps, and the websites you visit.

For example, you might have disabled location tracking on a phone but left it enabled on a tablet. Alternatively, you can have a laptop that tracks your location in the background, even if you consider disabling the feature in the apps you use. If you want to enable or disable location tracking completely, you need to decide on all these different ways to keep tabs on your location.

This is a great demo if you have a Google account. Go to your account settings on the web, then select Data and privacy And Local history. Choose Tools on this accountIt might show up on some phones, tablets, and laptops you’ve forgotten about—any device next to it on this list is saving your activity to your Google account for future reference.

You can click. turn off To disable this, but note the caveats listed in the confirmation box that appears on the screen: Your location can still be recorded by your mobile devices, the Find My Device service that helps you recover lost hardware, and Google Maps. Re-browse or search in your current location. This location history setting is a general toggle that affects features like Google Timeline and the ability to quickly find places you visit regularly.