Phone Tracking: What It Is and How to Prevent It

If your phone is tracked, there’s a lot of info companies, advertisers, and snoops can find out about you — your text and call logs, search history, and more. But if you can make your phone more difficult to track, you can help prevent your personal data from being monitored. Keep reading to learn how to know if your phone is being tracked and how a VPN can help stop phone tracking.

Yes, family and friends can track your phone if you use location-tracking services like Find My on your iPhone. Advertisers and companies can useweb tracking technology like cookies to track your phone and online browsing activity. And parents, jealous partners, and even state-sponsoredhackers can use mobile spyware to keep tabs on you. 

Phone tracking isn’t all bad. In fact, it’s helpful to have location services enabled and remotely accessible in case of emergency or a stolen device. But if someone is monitoring your phone without you knowing, you’ll want to stop the apps or programs responsible.

If you want to stop phone tracking, you can change your phone settings, switch to a private browser, configure your app permissions more carefully, or use a VPN. We’ll dive into those methods below. For now, installAVG Secureline VPN to encrypt your connection and help stop your phone from being tracked.

How to tell if your phone is being tracked

It’s pretty easy to tell if someone is tracking your phone location. iPhones even tell you whenever your location services, camera, or microphone have recently been used. Most of the time, it’s not someone snooping, but simply an app that you recently used.

How to find out if your iPhone is being tracked

Generally, signs that your iPhone is being tracked also mimic thesigns that your phone is hacked. Check for unknown devices in your Find My settings, take note of any weird performance issues (like random shutdowns or battery drain), and check for unknown apps. If you find anything suspicious, it could be a sign that your iPhone is being tracked.

Your iPhone notification bar might also indicate when features are accessed. At the top of the homescreen, look for the following:

• Anarrow means Location Services was just used

• Anorange dot means your microphone was just accessed

• Agreen dot means the camera was just accessed

Slide your finger down diagonally from the top-right corner, then at the top of the Control Center, check which app accessed one of the features above.

If you haven’t used the app recently — or if it’s an app you’ve never heard of before — then it’s time to check your security settings and run ananti-spyware tool on your phone, because you might have aspyware app.

How to find out if your Android is being tracked

If you want to know if your Android phone is being tracked, look for performance issues such as a rapidly depleting battery or an unusuallyhot phone. In extreme cases, unusual performance problems can sometimes be a sign that your phone microphone is hacked and constantly working, or even that someone is constantly tracking you through your phone camera.

Here’s how to check for performance issues that could indicate your phone being tracked:

1. Open your AndroidSettingsand tapBattery.

2. TapView details.

Here, you can see how much battery each app is using. If something looks unusual, check online to see if it’s a legit app. If an app looks unfamiliar and you can’t figure out what it is, it might be tracking you.

As you work to find out if someone is tracking your phone — whether it’s your camera, microphone, or your location — consider using a VPN to encrypt the data you send and receive online.AVG Secure VPN can help hide your location by changing your IP address, and lock away your online data behind bank-grade encryption. Try AVG Secure VPN to help stop would-be trackers.

How to stop someone from tracking your phone

The best way to help block phone tracking is touse a VPN, which helps prevent websites you visit from directly tracking your activity. You should also change a few settings on your phone to turn off location tracking and switch to a different browser to help stop ad tracking. Combining these methods, you can help block your phone from being tracked.

Here are the eight best ways to prevent your phone from being tracked:

Method 1: Turn off location services (iOS and Android)

To stop apps from tracking your location, turn off your location services — but remember that certain apps and features, like Google Maps or location sharing in messaging apps, won’t work as well. If you don’t want to completely disable location tracking, you can block it only on specific apps.

Even if your location services are turned off, your phone can still be tracked through yourIP address. You’ll need to download a VPN to be even more invisible on the web.

How to block location tracking on an iPhone

Here’s how to block location tracking across your entire iPhone:

1. Go to your iOSSettings and choosePrivacy & Security.

2. TapLocation Services.

3. Toggle offLocation Services.

From the Location Servces screen, you can also select an app and chooseNever,AskNext Time Or When I Share, orWhile Using the App to define exactly when your location will be shared with an individual app or service.

How to block location tracking on Android

Here’s how to block location tracking on an Android phone:

1. Open your AndroidSettings.

2. SelectLocation.

3. Toggle the Location setting to Off.

Just like on iPhone, you can also block location tracking on specific apps. From the Location screen, scroll to the list of apps, choose an app, then select when location services can be accessed for the specified app.

Method 2: Use a VPN

AVPN encrypts your communications and hides your location, making you nearly invisible to third parties such as hackers and even your ISP. By connecting you to the internet through a secure and encrypted tunnel, a VPN keeps your web activity more private and helps prevent trackers from monitoring your phone’s internet activity.

AVG Secure VPN uses bank-grade 256-bit encryption to shield your internet traffic against trackers and snoops. By providing this protective layer when you’re connected to the internet, AVG Secure VPN helps protect the personal data you share online while skirting phone tracking by your ISP and other trackers.

Method 3: Use a private browser

Aprivate browser like Tor orAVG Secure Browser offers much more anonymity on the web than a normal browser. Private browsers block many cookies and other temporary internet files, block ads, force websites to use HTTPS encryption, and disable tracking scripts.

So if you don’t want your phone tracked, use one of thebest security and privacy browsers. Then, check out our guide to thebest privacy apps for Android, and if you’re an iPhone user, we have a list of thebest security apps for iPhone, too.

Method 4: Turn Bluetooth off

Bluetooth is a technology that lets different devices connect to one another. But when Bluetooth is enabled and not being used, it still searches for possible connections. If your Bluetooth connection is ever synced to someone else’s device without you knowing, that person might be able to track your location.

Here’s how to turn off Bluetooth on your phone:

Method 5: Use Airplane Mode

Turning onAirplane Mode stops your phone from sending or receiving radio signals, which will stop your phone from sending any tracking data too.

To turn on Airplane Mode on Android, swipe down from the top of your home screen, then tap the Airplane icon so it’s highlighted in the Quick Settings. On iOS devices, swipe down from the right side of your home screen and tap the airplane icon.

Method 6: Stop Google from tracking you

There are many ways that Google uses your data. In fact, if you download your Google data, you might be shocked at what you find — a list of every website you’ve visited in the past 24 hours is just the start. But you can stop Google collecting your data by making a few changes in your Google settings.

Here’s how to stop Google from tracking you and saving a history of your web activity:

1. Sign into your Google account on any device.

    

2. Go tomyaccount.google.com.

    

3. Tap theData & privacy tab (on desktop, this is called Privacy & personalization), scroll down toHistory settings, and selectWeb & App Activity.

    

4. TapTurn off in the Web & Activity section of the screen. You can also selectTurn off and delete activity to delete your history at the same time.

    

5. TapGot it to confirm.

Method 7: Manage app permissions

You can easily manage which apps have access to various permissions or settings on your phone. For instance, you may want Uber to have access to your location, but it probably doesn’t need to have access to your camera.

How to manage app permissions on an iPhone

1. Go toSettings and tapPrivacy & Security.

2. Here, you’ll see a list of your phone’s features, permissions, and functionalities.

3. Tap one of the features to see a list of which apps have access to it.

For example, tappingContacts shows you which apps have access to your contact list. If you don’t want a particular app to have access to that feature, toggle it off.

How to block app tracking on Android

1. Go to your AndroidSettings and tapApps.

2. Tap an app to see the app info and permissions.

3. SelectPermissionsto see which features that app has access to.

Our advice: keep the common-senseAndroid permissions and ditch the rest. For example, you probably want WhatsApp to have access to your contacts, and Google Maps and rideshare apps to have access to your location.

Method 8: Help protect your phone from spyware

Spyware is a type of malware used to track people's phones and record their activity. If you think your phone is being tracked, check for suspicious apps that you don’t remember installing, check your phone app usage for anything you don’t recognize, and look for a strange increase in network activity. 

Then, give these a try to help further protect your phone against spies and trackers:

Who is tracking my phone?

Smartphones track your location and activity using your IP address, Bluetooth technology, and GPS services. Smartphone tracking also lets your apps provide basic services, like the ability to find your location on maps or search for restaurants nearby. This type of tracking is often helpful.

Here’s who else is tracking your phone:

• Advertisers: Companies use smartphone tracking andbrowser cookies to create advertising profiles on users, helping themtarget their ads toward each user’s unique online habits. 
• Facebook: WhileFacebook likely isn’t listening to you, it does know when you visited the site or app, from where, and what you did there. 
• Google:Google stores plenty of data about how people use the web. 

While it may be creepy that companies collect your data, there’s also a real danger of your information leaking through these channels, like the2019 Facebook data breach. When leaks like this happen, hackers can get a detailed picture of your browsing activity.

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