How to Disable Android Smartphone Tracking [Are You Concerned About Your Privacy With Your Android Phone? Here Are A Few Tips]

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Word has recently come out that both iPhone and Android platforms are able to track your every move. While these are supposedly helpful in making location-based services work, those with concerns about privacy can do something about it.

Apple has come under fire for the discovery that iPhones and iPads can track and store location data for up to a year. Android phones are found to track user locations. Google itself has responded, essentially saying that that privacy is ultimately the responsibility of the user. Remember the “Location consent” prompt that says “collection will occur even when no applications are running?” By answering “yes” then this means you’ve practically given Google the right to track you.

Pending software updates that will remove or reduce these potential security loopholes, here are a few things you can do on your Android phone. Some of these will just take a few minutes of your time, but one solution will be a bit drastic.

Turn off location services

• Open your phone’s Settings (either from home screen or the applications list);
• Open Location & security settings;
• Uncheck “Use wireless networks”;
• Uncheck “Use GPS satellites.”

You can also turn off location-based preferences in Google services by going to Settings — Privacy Settings and unchecking the “use my location” box.

Do a factory reset

Disabling location services will disable tracking from this point on. But if you’ve had GPS and network-based tracking on for some time, then your smartphone will have a record of the last 50 cellsites and 200 Wi-Fi hotspots used. You will need do something more drastic if you’re that paranoid.

Android actually assigns a unique identifier to your phone when you first start it up. This means that the location data gathered from cellsites, Wi-Fi networks and GPS can be attributed to your specific handset (possibly including other information). The only way to change this unique ID is to do a factory reset.

• Open your phone’s Settings;
• Open Privacy settings;
• Tap “Factory Data reset”
• Confirm by pressing the “Reset phone” button.

Of course, doing a factory reset is a drastic option, and should only be done if you’re really that concerned about your privacy. You might want to backup your data and application first using your computer or using Titanium Backup for Android.

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