You know that little feature on your smartphone where you can turn off location history? Yeah, well, turns out that’s not the only way Google can track you. According to researchers at Princeton University, there are plenty of other ways that Google can keep its eyes on you, even if you’ve turned location services off for maps. It’s true that if you even open GoogleMaps, Google stores a snapshot of where you are. But checking out daily weather also zooms in on your location. And you probably had no idea that just googling some weird things like “chocolate chip cookies” or “kids science kits” will pinpoint your location as well…within a square foot. Apparently, someone is really, really interested in your top-secret cookie recipes.
As far as we can tell, as long as you turn off location services on every single app, you should be fine. But let’s face it, that’s probably not practical or convenient for most of us. And besides, the cool new things that location services provides are adding so much to make our smartphones more personal and, well, smart. And the conundrum continues…
For more details on how to turn off Google location services, click here.
