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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Google Knows Your Location Despite Location Services Setting

August 14, 2018

The big news yesterday was a report from AP concerning Google's record of your location history. The investigation found that many Google services on iOS and Android devices store location history even if you have turned off location services. The privacy setting gives the user the impression that turning off location services should stop Google from tracking the device. Google's support page states, "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." Google Maps is particularly egregious at ignoring the location privacy setting.

It appears that an effective way to actually stop the tracking is to disable "Web & App Activity," which is enabled by default. You configure the setting from your Google account and not from the device itself. The steps are pretty easy.

  1. Go to Google "My Activity" page
  2. Click the "GO TO MY ACTIVITY" link
  3. Select My Activity in the left menu bar
  4. Toggle off the Web & App Activity switch
  5. Confirm the action
  6. Make sure the Web & App Activity now shows a "paused" status

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