The GPS chip built into our smartphone gives us much convenience, allowing apps or programs on our phone to quickly pinpoint our location, provide weather updates and more. Tracking location through GPS may seem harmless, but someone else can use the information to find out where you are, your perferences and the most visited places. Location can be traced by advertising companies, government and family members. If you are curious about how someone else track your phone location, you can find answer in this guide.
How the government tracks your location?
It’s known to most of us that goverment can access our location data from cellular provider, if they have a warrant. Once they have the warrant, the cellular company will provider your accurate and real-time location. It does make sense that government can track someone’s phone location with a warrant. It’s always used by police to locate criminials and missing people.
However, in today’s technology era, government don’t even need to take the assistance of your cellular company. There are plenty of ways to track your phone location, such as employing stingary services,
How the advertisers track your location?
Even if your cellular provider can protect your location data well, it’s still possible for someone else to track your phone location. When you access or install an app, they require some permissions to perform the function related to location tracking. They will associate the location with the IP address of your network. Companies track your phone location to target ads.
Be careful that some programs or application are not designed to locate family members and ensure family safety. They aims to gather your location data and sell these information to the highest bidder. You may did not pay money for such application, so it has to make money somewhere. Thus, it’s essential to preview relevant privacy policy and avoid giving location permission to certain apps.
For instance, weather apps like Accuweather was caught sharing user’s location data with third-party advertisers. It’s possible that some people can use this data to track weather user’s precise location. Thus it’s advisable to use inbuilt weather app rather than third-party weather app, or you can manage app permission on your phone.
How your family members track your location?
It’s not a secret that one can determine family member’s location with the help of GPS tracker. Apps like Apple’s Find My Friends and Google Maps enables you to share your precise real-time location with family members or friends. Once you accept their location request, your family members can see your location on the map. It’s a convenient way to know if your kids get home safely and see how far your partner is away from home.
These apps track your phone location with your permission, but it shows how pervasive this GPS technology is. It’s the same technology you can utilize to locate your lost or stolen Android or iOS device. If you are not ready to install any app, the market also provides you with plenty of online tracking service.
Different location trackers including phone number tracker, reverse lookup service allow users to track phone location without installing apps. Take Find My Phone as a specific example. All you need to do is go to its website, enter the phone number and your email address, then get started. It shows you exact location in real-time and you can access city area, street name, zip, attached timestamp.
Should you disable location service to prevent being tracked?
It seems that location tracking can put your privacy at stake and some phone users are wondering how to prevent cell phone being tracked. To avoid being tracked, iPhone users can launch Settings, tap on Privacy > Location Services. Tap the toggle next to Location Services and turn off location services for all apps. If you’re using an Android device, you have to go to Settings > Security and location > Google location settings then switch off the toggle.
However, location tracking can not be generalized. As we mentioned before, GPS tracker is especially useful for you to locate family members and keep connected with them, find nearby restaurant, get weather updates and much more. If you absoultely disable location service, you cannot enjoy the above benefits. It’s better you share the location with someone you trust or you can manage location permisison of certain apps on your phone.
Conclusion
Questions like “can someone else really track my phone location” can be answered in this guide. Government, advertisers, family members or friends can track your phone location through GPS tracking system. Whether location service should be disabled depends on the specific purposes. We strongly suggest you to share location with the person you trust and be prudent when accessing the application.
