How to Stop Your Smartphone from Constantly Tracking Your Location

Your smartphone tracks your location for all sorts of useful things—driving navigation, updating the weather forecast, and even live traffic updates. However, if you'd rather not have Google and Apple tracking that information—not to mention having it available on your phone for thieves to find—here's how you can turn off location tracking.

Photo remixed from an original by Yurchyks/Shutterstock.

Location tracking actually provides lots of useful things to us, but while Google and Apple collect all that data anonymously, it's still stored on your phone (and in Apple's case, your computer). Anyone with the right tools could easily find out where you've been with your phone over a significant period of time, so if you're worried about this, you may want to turn this features off. Here's how.

Disable Location Caching on Android

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Luckily, Android's location tracking is actually an opt-in feature. You may or may not have enabled it when you first set up your phone. To find out, head to Settings > Location and Security, and uncheck "Use Wireless Networks". This will make applications like Maps a bit slower to grab your current location, and it won't be quite as accurate, but Google won't be collecting any location data, nor will it be stored on your phone thereafter.

However, if you want to clear the previously cached locations from your phone, you'll need to rooted your device. Then after installing the free Location Cache app, you can view a map of your tracked locations on it, as well as clear them from your phone and disable the cache with one tap.

Disable Location Tracking on iOS

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In iOS, the situation is a bit more complicated. Turning off location services will stop sending data back to Apple, but it will still cache your location on your phone, so anyone with access to your computer or your phone can see where you've been (since iOS syncs all that information back to iTunes).

The only way to do anything about it is to jailbreak your device and install the previously mentioned Untrackerd app. Untrackerd is very simple, though, just install it, and it'll clear your location cache and prevent it from recording anything in the future. It doesn't even have an icon on your home screen—just install it and forget it.

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Location tracking can be a great thing—in fact, we think it's one of the best things about smartphones. However, if you don't like the idea of big brother knowing your whereabouts—or if you're concerned about what could happen if your phone was lost or stolen—these simple tips should help keep your phones clean of location information.

(From Life Hacker)

How to stop your phone being hacked - and why it was easy to do in the noughties

Did you know that you can access the voicemail of your mobile from another phone? Well after the revelations about phone hacking over the last few months most people do now. But for many people it came as a shock to find out that accessing phone messages in this way was possible at all.

However anyone who travels a lot on business will probably know all about remote voicemail. They are most likely to use it when traveling outside the UK to retrieve their messages. Basically the standard voicemail numbers (901 etc) don't tend to work outside the UK, so users need to ring a longer number and then input a code. I remember doing this countless times seven or eight years ago.

Back in the early noughties, when phone hacking was at its height, it was very easy to access other people's voicemails. This was because simple to guess default pins (0000) tended to be offered by the networks and human nature being what it is meant that many people didn't change those pins. I certainly didn't. Today it is a bit trickier to hack a phone and it is nigh on impossible if you follow these instructions.

1 Make sure you have a dedicated pin number for voicemail - Over the last few years mobile networks have got a bit more savvy about this and some have insisted people create their own pin numbers - this inevitably makes voicemail more secure. If you have a default number contact your network provider and change it. In fact if you are really concerned about it change the number on a regular basis.

2 Make sure you keep your personal details private - Putting your address, phone etc on the Internet gives hackers a chance to find out more about you. If they start finding out details like your mother's maiden, where you were born, favourite football team, name of your dog etc then they could in theory hackers could have enough information about you to start convincing networks that they are you and can hear your messages.

3 Don't take it for granted that no one will want to hear your messages. You might not be a soap star, politician, footballer or crime victim, but there maybe someone lurking in your past who would love to find out more about your messages.

Ultimately though hacking voicemails is much rarer these days. Real hackers are almost certainly more interested in your email.

(From shinyshiny)