Should you turn location services off? (2023)

Should you have location services on or off?

If you want to enhance your privacy or extend your phone's battery life, you might want to disable location services — though this will make using your phone substantially less convenient because so many apps depend on knowing where you are.

When Location Services are off, apps can't use your location in the foreground or background. This will limit the performance of various Apple and third-party apps. If you would like to reset all of your location settings to the factory default, go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset Location & Privacy.

Turning off the location service on your phone can help conceal your location. This is important if you don't want third parties knowing where you are or being able to track your movement.

Important: When you turn off location on your phone, apps and services can't get your phone's location. You can still get local results and ads based on your IP address.

This means that if you share your location anyone who can view your social media posts may be able to find you in person. If you have children, they may be sharing their location on social media, which could put them at risk of unwanted contact from strangers.

You cannot be tracked if it is powered down. That would include a dead battery.

Location Services is designed to protect your information and enable you to choose what you share. Location Services allows Apple and third-party apps and websites to gather and use information based on the current location of your iPhone or Apple Watch to provide a variety of location-based services.

Find My can locate a phone even if it's off — as long as it has iOS 15 installed. (Note: you can also use the Find My app to help with your own security — to share your location with individuals and send recurring notifications of when you leave and arrive.

While they won't get a notification, they will no longer see you on their list of friends in the Find My app. This will tip them off that you're no longer sharing location with them.

How do I secretly stop sharing my location?

Turn Off Share My Location Option. Another method would be to turn off Share My Location option. This will prevent the sharing of your location. The feature works great and it will not send any notification.

With their GPS radios and constant data connection, smartphones are technically capable of tracking our location and monitoring our activity, which is enough to raise privacy concerns among users. Few people know, however, that phones can be tracked using little more than a text message.

When it comes to generally healthy, secure relationships, location sharing is “absolutely a non-issue.” “If [couples] do have their location tracking on, it's not a topic of conversation or something people think too much about,” Bobby tells Inverse.

Phones and tablets can send location information to apps and websites if your device location setting is turned on, and your app and browser permissions allow it. You can control whether location is sent from your device to any app or website, including google.com, by changing your location permissions.

To see who can track your location, open up the ‌Find My‌ app and tap on the "People" tab. People who have shared their location with you and people you have shared your location with will show up in this list. A person who is able to see your location will be denoted with "Can see your location."

The following signs may indicate that someone is using your phone's camera to watch you: Suspicious background apps. Camera misbehaving. Odd files and inexplicably low storage space.

You can immediately check if your phone has been compromised, or if your calls, messages etc have been forwarded without your knowledge. All you need to do is dial a few USSD codes - ##002#, *#21#, and *#62# from your phone's dialer.

What does it look like when you turn off location sharing?

If you toggle it off, your current location won't be visible to the people you were sharing it with previously. They'll see a "location unavailable" message when they attempt to pull up your location, which is the same message the app shows if your phone is turned off.

If someone has installed spyware then a good sign of this is that you might find your phone is running a little slower than usual. The battery is draining too fast. Similar to the previous point – installed spyware on your device will also run the battery down much quicker than before.

Unfortunately, the answer is “yes.” There are a number of spy apps that can sit hidden your phone and record everything you do. The snoop can watch every detail of your life and you'll never know. We're going to take a look at what spying apps are on the market and how they work so you know how to stay safe.

If you are sharing your location with someone, they will show up on this screen so that you know that you are sharing. While you have My Location turned off, friends and family won't be able to see your location in the main 'People' section of the Find My app.

Check your Find My iPhone App

If you have the Find My Friends app enabled on your iPhone, you can use it to check if someone is checking your location. The app will show you a list of friends who are currently tracking your location.