Open your phone’s settings right now and check which apps have access to your location. Go on, we’ll wait. Found a few surprises? A flashlight app that wants to know exactly where you are? A game that’s been quietly checking your coordinates since 2022? You’re not imagining it. Location tracking is one of the most overused permissions on any device, and most of the time, it has nothing to do with making the app work better.
Let’s break down why this happens, how to shut it down on your phone, what’s actually being done with your data, and one layer of tracking most people never even think about.
Why Apps Track Your Location (and Who Benefits)
Some apps genuinely need your location. Maps apps, weather apps, food delivery, ride-sharing. Fair enough, that’s the whole point.
But then there’s everything else. Shopping apps, social media, games, productivity tools, even some flashlight and battery-saver apps, all asking “can I know where you are, always?” Why?
The honest answer is money. Your location is valuable data, and a whole industry exists to buy, sell, and trade it.
Here’s who’s typically on the other end:
Advertisers want to know where you go so they can build a profile of your habits. Visit a gym a lot? Expect protein powder ads. Spend time near a particular store? You might get a coupon for it an hour later.
Data brokers collect location data from many apps, bundle it together, and sell it to whoever’s buying, marketing companies, insurance firms, sometimes even researchers or government agencies.
The app developers themselves sometimes monetize location data as a side business, especially with free apps. If you’re not paying for the app, your data might be part of how it pays for itself.
None of this is usually explained clearly when you tap “Allow” during setup. Most people agree to location access because the app nags them until they do, not because they actually weighed the trade-off.
How to Stop Location Tracking on Android and iPhone
The good news is both major mobile platforms give you real control here, you just have to go looking for it.
On Android:
Head to Settings > Location > App location permissions. You’ll see every app that’s asked for location access, along with what level you’ve given it. For most apps, switch this to “Ask every time” or “Allow only while using the app.” Anything that doesn’t need location at all, set it to “Don’t allow.”
While you’re there, check Settings > Location > Google Location Accuracy and Location History under your Google account. Both can be turned off if you’d rather Google not keep a running log of everywhere you’ve been.
On iPhone:
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Tap any app to choose between “Never,” “Ask Next Time,” “While Using the App,” or “Always.” For almost everything except navigation apps, “While Using the App” or “Never” is the better default.
Scroll to the bottom of that same screen and tap System Services, then turn off Significant Locations. This is Apple’s quiet habit of logging places you visit often, and most people have no idea it’s even running.
On both platforms, it’s worth doing a sweep every few months. Apps update, request new permissions, and sometimes reset settings after major updates. A five-minute checkup once in a while keeps things tidy.
What They Actually Do With That Data
Knowing your location once isn’t a big deal. Knowing it constantly, over weeks and months, builds something much more revealing: a pattern.
From location data alone, apps and the companies they share data with can figure out:
- Where you live and work (the two places you’re at most often, at predictable times)
- Your daily routine, gym schedule, school drop-offs, your favorite coffee shop
- Your relationships, two people whose location histories overlap a lot, a lot
- Sensitive details about your life, visits to medical clinics, places of worship, or other locations that say more about you than you’d want an algorithm to know
This data gets combined with other things the app knows, your browsing habits, your contacts, your purchase history, to build a profile that’s far more detailed than most people realize. And once that profile exists, it doesn’t just sit there. It gets used for targeted ads, sold to brokers, and in some cases handed over in bulk to anyone willing to pay for “anonymized” datasets that aren’t nearly as anonymous as they sound.
The unsettling part is that none of this requires anything sketchy or illegal. It’s all built into how the modern app economy works. The location icon on your screen is doing a lot more than helping you find the nearest pizza place.
The Layer Most People Forget: Your IP Address
Here’s something that surprises a lot of people. Even if you lock down every location permission on your phone using the steps above, apps and websites can still get a rough idea of where you are just from your IP address.
Your IP address is tied to your internet connection, and it reveals your general location, often down to the city, sometimes closer. An app doesn’t need GPS access to know roughly where you’re connecting from. It just needs your IP, which it gets automatically every time you go online.
This is where ZoogVPN comes in. A VPN masks your real IP address and replaces it with one from a server location of your choosing. So even if an app has zero permission to access your GPS, it can’t lean on your IP address to estimate where you are either.
Think of it as covering both doors. The settings you adjusted above control one way apps can find you. Your IP address is the other, quieter way, the one that’s easy to forget because there’s no popup asking your permission for it.
One More Layer of Privacy
Mask your IP and close the door your phone settings can’t
If you’re serious about keeping your location private, whether you’re streaming, browsing, or just don’t like the idea of your daily routine being for sale, try ZoogVPN and add that extra layer of privacy your phone’s settings alone can’t give you.
- Roksolana KogutRoksolana dives deep into online privacy, security, and the tools that make the internet work better for everyone. She has a natural taste for taking technical subjects and making them feel approachable, useful, and worth reading.
