How to stop your iphone from recording your frequent locations

Your iPhone is equipped with a feature called Frequent Locations, which slowly tracks your location in the background to keep you updated via the Today View and the Lock screen on how long it would take you to get to your favorite places based on how often you visit them.

If you choose to enable Location Services during the initial iPhone setup, this feature will be enabled by default, so if you feel like it is a slight hindrance on your ability to remain private, you just might be right. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can disable the feature and keep your iPhone from knowing where you are going next.

How Significant Locations works

Significant locations takes location samples every so often to find out where you spend most of your time. It plots down the places you visit on a map, and the times you visit them, and uses the information it gathers to determine where you’re most likely to go based on your current location. From this information, it’s able to give you tips in Notification Center and on the Lock screen on how long it would take you to get to your next destination, whether it’s home, work, or something else nearby that you visit often.

For example, this feature might tell you:

• Right now, it would take you about 10 minutes to drive home, or
• Right now, it would take you about 37 minutes to drive to work

Why you would want to disable it

Since Significant Locations would essentially be plotting your every move on a map and tracking your most likely destination from there, it raises the eyebrow of just how much personal information we’re giving to our computers and mobile devices these days that could easily get hacked into or snooped on.

By keeping this feature on, you’re a walking keylogger of every location you’ve ever been to. You should consider disabling this feature if you want to keep your location and private life with yourself and not with the internet, which is being used to map and track your location.

What’s more is the constant use of your location in the background will have an impact on your device’s battery life, which may be yet another reason you might want to disable the feature.

How to disable Significant Locations in iOS

So by now you’re probably wondering what you can do to turn the feature off; you’re in luck, because it’s actually pretty easy. You can simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Launch the Settings app and navigate to Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations.

Step 2: Toggle off the switch for “Significant Locations” and your device will stop actively logging your location for this service.

In some cases, your device may have been tracking your location in the background for some time. If this is the case, you may also see a log of location histories and a “Clear History” button that you can use to clear the history of Significant Locations. We’d suggest using it if you see it. The button won’t appear if your device hasn’t been tracking your location long enough to keep a record.

Conclusion

Disabling Significant Locations is a good privacy step to take for all of your iOS devices, and not just one of them. Keeping this kind of information off of your device helps ensure that your privacy is secured even in the event that your device gets compromised – hacked or stolen.

Not only is the feature creepy overall, but its usefulness raises a lot of eyebrows and its methods of helping you find your way home are questionable at best. After all, if you wanted to know how to get home, you’d probably just launch your Maps app and query for yourself without iOS tracking you in the background.

Your iPhone will track and record places that you visit most often to provide better location-based data and suggestions across iOS 11. While these suggestions can be super helpful, you may not like the idea of your iPhone and iPad tracking the locations you frequent

If you value your privacy more than you do location-based data and suggestions, you can turn the feature off.

How to turn off Significant Locations on iPhone and iPad

1. Launch the Settings app from the Home screen.
2. Tap on Privacy.
3. Tap Location Services at the top.

Tap System Services. It’s all the way down at the bottom of the list.

Tap Significant Locations.

Tap the Significant Locations On/Off Switch. When the switch is gray, that means the feature has been turned off.

That’s all there is to it. Locations you travel to most will no longer be tracked. While this comes at the expense of not having as accurate location data in places like the Today Summary screen, it also preserves your privacy better and to a lot of us, that’s more important.

Updated January 2018: Completely overhauled the article to reflect changes in iOS 11.

Every few months, iPhone users around the world begin to panic yet again as a new round of tech blog coverage reminds us that Apple’s iPhone tracks our every move as part of a “Frequent Locations” feature. The potentially nifty feature allows iOS to monitor your position in order to determine places you visit most frequently, and this data could really come into play in future versions of Apple’s mobile platform by allowing your iPhone to present location-specific information that could be useful, perhaps similar to Google Now. Those concerned with privacy, however, likely want nothing to do with Apple’s Frequent Locations feature — and of course, disabling it couldn’t be easier.

It is somewhat troubling to many users that so much location data is collected by the iPhone without users first having to opt in. This is a valid point, of course, but concerns are likely a bit overblown each time tech blogs rehash the story.

The latest round of coverage comes from BuzzFeed and Business Insider, so we thought we would remind everyone how to disable Frequent Locations before things get out of hand yet again.

As we first noted back in August last year when users on a German security forum brought attention to the Frequent Locations feature even before iOS 7 was released to the public, disabling the feature takes just a few seconds.

In the Settings app on your iPhone, go to Privacy and then Location Services. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list and tap on System Services. Now simply tap Frequent Locations and disable the “Improve Maps” and “Frequent Locations” options.

Beyond making you more comfortable in knowing that your phone is no longer recording location data, disabling Frequent Locations may also have a slight positive impact on battery life. For more on improving your phone’s battery life, check out these 15 tips for squeezing as much battery life as possible out of your iPhone.

Zach Epstein has worked in and around ICT for more than 15 years, first in marketing and business development with two private telcos, then as a writer and editor covering business news, consumer electronics and telecommunications. Zach’s work has been quoted by countless top news publications in the US and around the world. He was also recently named one of the world’s top-10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes, as well as one of Inc. Magazine’s top-30 Internet of Things experts.

Apple’s “Significant Locations” service is often helpful no matter how you travel, or how far. The smartphone tool is designed to provide a saved location as a starting point for Apple Maps, giving you driving times and directions, reliable walking routes, or an automatic pickup spot for your rideshare.

In theory, this saves you the hassle of having to type in your address, but it doesn’t always work correctly. When an iPhone gets a Significant Location wrong, the effects can cause delays. However, there is a way to fix an incorrect saved location.

While you can’t program in your own suggestion, you can delete the location your iPhone has incorrectly saved and allow it to rediscover a more accurate spot. This can be very useful if, for example, you’re going to be staying at a hotel for a few days and your iPhone has saved an inaccurate regular pickup point as the hotel’s address.

Note that this won’t stop your iPhone from tracking you in the future. If you want to do that, you’ll have to turn off location services.

How to change the Significant Locations saved on your iPhone

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Scroll down to select “Privacy.”

3. Tap “Location Services.”

4. Scroll down to select “System Services” (it should be the bottom item).

5. Scroll down to select “Significant Locations.”

6. This will require you to authenticate yourself through Face ID, Touch ID, or by typing in your passcode.

7. To change and update specific locations, select a city from the list under the History banner.

8. Select an address from the list of saved spots.

9. Tap on “Edit” in the upper right corner of the map screen.

10. Tap the red dot icon next to the specific address you wish to change.

11. Tap “Delete” and your iPhone will clear out that address, and will rerecord it the next time you visit.

How to delete all of the Significant Locations on your iPhone

1. Start from “Significant Locations.”

2. Scroll down to select “Clear History”. It should be at the bottom of the cities list.

If you want to turn Significant Locations off, simply flip the green button at the top of your Significant Locations page to grey. If you want to turn off location tracking altogether, you can learn how to do that by reading our article, “How to stop your iPhone from tracking your location, and manage each app’s location tracking.”

Lifehacker's Complete Guide to Data Privacy) : title Lifehacker's Complete Guide to Data Privacy We’ll walk you through everything you should do to live the most secure, private life in the digital era.

You probably know your Android phone or iPhone can pinpoint your location for GPS, local search, or the weather. Hopefully, you also know that means your phone keeps track of everywhere you go, all the time. Don’t be alarmed—it’s the trade-off you make for the features you get. If it makes you uncomfortable, here’s how to opt-out of location-tracking on Android and iOS.

Managing Location Services on Android

If you’re an Android user, Google’s location services are broken into three main features : Location Accuracy, Location History, and Location Sharing.

• Location Accuracy is the feature that gives apps like Google Now, Google Maps, Foursquare, Twitter, and even your camera app access to your position. Whenever an app shows you something nearby, suggests local businesses, or helps you find the closest gas station, it’s using Location Accuracy. If you leave it on, your phone will triangulate your exact position via GPS, wifi, mobile networks, and other device sensors. Turn it off, and your device will only use GPS to figure out where you are.
• Location History is the feature that keeps track of where you’ve been, and any addresses you type in or navigate to.
• Location Sharing is self-explanatory, but here’s a quick reminder: This feature allows others to see where you are in real-time. You have to specifically set this up in Google Maps for your friends to see your location; they can’t just ping your device by default (obviously).

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Each item is also free of all possible pore-cloggers and contains zero hormone disruptors.

To disable Location Accuracy in Android:

1. Pull up Settings
2. Tap on Location
3. Disable the “Use location” button.
4. Also tap on “Google Location Accuracy” and set that feature to “Off.”

The Location screen is where you’ll be able to set specific location permissions for apps, like whether you want an app to always be able to access your device’s location or only when you’re using said app. You can also turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning, if you want to make it harder for apps and services to pinpoint your exact location.

This screen is also where you can disable Google’s Location History, if you don’t want it to keep a record of where you’ve been, as well as your Android’s Location Sharing.

(Note: We tested this on a Google Pixel 3; the exact navigation / names might be slightly different for your specific Android device.)

To delete your existing Location History in Android:

• Visit Google’s Activity Controls (which is where you can also disable Location History tracking account-wide)
• Click “Manage Activity”
• Click on the tiny trash can icon in the lower-right corner of the screen. It looks like this:

• Confirm that you want to delete all of your location history, and then click the big red “Delete Location History” link.

You can also have Google automatically delete older location history on your behalf—useful if you want to use the feature to track your recent whereabouts, but don’t want to keep a permanent record. Within the Google Maps Timeline , click on the gear icon to pull up your settings.

Select “Automatically delete Location History,” and then pick whichever timeline you want:

If you’re on your phone instead of a computer, you can delete your location history by pulling up Google Maps, clicking on the hamburger icon, selecting “Your Timeline,” tapping on the triple-dot icon in the upper-right corner, tapping on Settings, and scrolling down until you see the “Delete all Location History” option. This is also where you’ll set up automatic deletion, if you’re interested, and where you’ll turn off Location Services for your device or Location History for your account

To stop sharing your location with certain people

1. Pull up Google’s Location Sharing settings
2. Remove people to eliminate their ability to see your location in real time.

If you’re on your phone instead of a computer, open Google Maps, tap on the hamburger icon, and tap on Location Sharing. You’ll be able to add and remove your friends as you see fit.

Without your knowledge and consent, every move you make is being tracked in alarming detail. The Frequent Locations system pinpoints the places you go on a map, how many times you’ve paid a visit, and the exact times of your arrival and departure.

If you haven’t disabled the feature, this means that Apple knows where you work and live – and is even able to understand and predict your daily routine.

Few people knew this existed – and until this morning, neither did I. After being shown how to access all of this information, I was stunned, and it almost felt like I was a ‘person of interest’ in a low-budget film about the FBI. Thankfully, I’m not that interesting.

So: how do you access the page? Well, firstly, you’ll only be able to do so if you have an iPhone which is running iOS 7 or iOS 8.

Go to the Settings section, and hit the Privacy tab. Then, click Location Services at the top, which will probably say ‘on’. From here, scroll right to the bottom of the menu and click System Services. Finally, press Frequent Locations, which is the last option available.

At the bottom, you’ll see your history, including the locations and how many visits made.

By clicking on one of them for more information, you might be presented with several addresses. Selecting a specific location will lead you to a list of the dates and times you were there.

Prof Noel Sharkey, a computing expert, warned: ‘This is shocking. Every place you go, where you shop, where you have a drink – it is all recorded. This is a divorce lawyer’s dream. But what horrifies me is that it’s so secret. Why did we not know about this?’

Thankfully, there are ways to disable this tool. In the Frequent Locations menu, it’s possible to clear your history, and stop your iPhone from logging these details in the future. Unfortunately, Apple will still collect the information – but it means you won’t be able to access it in the form of a map.

Apple has insisted the tool merely helps them to improve their Maps app, and none of the data ever leaves the phone.

But Prof Sharkey added: ‘If you put that information in someone else’s hands, then it becomes powerful, and in some cases, dangerous.’

By Charlie Sorrel • 11:00 am, January 10, 2018

Bubbles show you where you have visited.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Your iPhone knows where you are, and it remembers where you have been. It keeps a record of your frequent hangouts — aka “significant locations” — and uses this data to make location-based suggestions using Siri and to power other features. Don’t panic, though: This data is kept on your phone, not collected by Apple.

Maybe you want to switch it off anyway, though. Perhaps you’re having an affair and don’t want your suspicious spouse to find out where you and your lover hook up. Or you’re an undercover cop and don’t want your visits to the police station to show up on your phone. Today we’ll see how to access your recent locations data, remove it, and switch it off altogether.

How to find significant locations on your iPhone

Significant Locations settings’ are buried pretty deep. You’ll find them in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations. You must authenticate yourself to see them, using your passcode, Touch ID or Face ID. Once you’re in, you’ll see a list of the towns and cities you have visited. Each one will have the number of sub-locations, and the date or date range of your visits.

The city you live in will probably have the most entries, but you may be surprised at which other spots have been recorded. To view the locations on a map, just tap the name of a city.

The data can be either fascinating or scary, depending on your point of view. You’ll see a map showing circles indicating your most-visited locations. Below the map is a list, ordered by frequency of visit. Tap on one of these locations and you’ll see yet another list (and map) detailing the exact times of your visits.

How to catch a cheater

How to remove significant locations from your iPhone

There are two ways to remove significant locations: the nuclear way, and the surgical way. At any spot in these lists of data, you can tap the Edit button at top right, and then remove entries. Depending on how deep you are in the list hierarchy, you can separately delete individual visits to a single location or remove an entire city from your history.

In our example of an undercover cop, the officer might choose to just remove the police station visits and leave the rest, although that means removing each and every future visit as well to stay “clean.”

How to switch off iPhone location tracking entirely

The nuclear option is to switch off significant locations. This is done by toggling the button at the top of the significant locations settings. However, if you do this, you lose out on some iPhone features. For example, the Maps widgets won’t work properly without access to this data. As ever, you must decide if the tradeoff is worth it. Given that accessing this data requires physical access to your iPhone (or iPad), as well as your passcode or fingerprint, you may consider the data safe. Or not.

Like a diary

For some folks, the significant locations data could be a fun way to see what they were up to in the past. For others, it could even prove useful, helping to remember client visits or track down that amazing restaurant you visited a few times while on vacation. Alternatively, the very existence of this kind of information on your iPhone might terrify you. Go take a look at what your iPhone has recorded, and make up your own mind.

You were using your iPhone when all of a sudden you stumbled upon a setting called Significant Locations. “Has Apple been tracking me everywhere I go!?” you ask yourself. In this article, I’ll explain the iPhone Significant Locations feature and show you how to turn it off!

What Is iPhone Significant Locations?

iPhone Significant Locations is a feature that tracks and saves the places you’re located most often. Apple uses these locations to send you specific alerts in the Calendar, Maps, and Photos app. Although your iPhone saves these Significant Locations, Apple can’t see or read them because the data is encrypted.

To view your iPhone Significant Locations, go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System -> Services -> Significant Locations. If you have Significant Locations turned on and you’ve had your iPhone for awhile, you’ll probably see a few locations here under History. If you just got your iPhone, you may not have any have any Significant Locations yet.

How To Turn Off Significant Locations

Turning off Significant Locations is one of the many steps in our article about extending iPhone battery life. Location Services that track you everywhere you go can be a huge drain on your iPhone’s battery.

To turn off iPhone Significant Locations, open Settings and tap Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Significant Locations. Then, turn off the switch next to Significant Locations. You’ll know it’s off when it’s white.

If you ever want to turn iPhone Significant Locations back on, just go back to this menu and turn the switch back on. It make take a few days before Apple has enough data to save any Significant Locations on your iPhone.

Clear Significant Locations History

If you want to erase the Significant Locations that have been saved on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Significant Locations and tap Clear History. Finally, tap Clear History when the confirmation alert appears on the screen.

Significant Locations: Explained!

You now know what Significant Locations are on your iPhone and how to turn them off! Share this article on social media to teach your family and friends about iPhone Significant Locations too. Leave a comment below if you have any other questions about your iPhone!

There’s a little-known feature built into your iPhone that keeps a history of everywhere you’ve been – and how many times you’ve been there.

This “Significant Locations” list can be found in your settings, but it’s rather hard to find, whether purposeful or not.

Apple tracks and stores where you’ve been and how often (and when) you visit. But it gets even more detailed than that: Your iPhone compiles locations specific to a single address and tracks when you leave there and even how long it took to get there and by which mode of transportation.

According to Apple, the list is kept “to learn places that are significant to you.” And Apple isn’t alone in keeping track of this amount of location data – Google does it too, through a “Location History” list found in your Google account.

“This data is encrypted and stored only on your device and will not be shared without your consent,” Apple said on its website. “It is used to provide you with personalised services, such as predictive traffic routing, and to build better Photos Memories.”

But if you no longer want “Significant Locations” turned on, here’s how to turn off and delete the history from your iPhone: