How Google Tracks Your Location Without Your Permission

Here is how google tracks location and what you should do about it. Most of us believe that turning off location history on Google prevents from tracking us, but it is going to be as much of a shock for you as it was for us that this is not the case in reality. This merely restricts Google from adding the details of your location on its timeline. What it keeps doing is that it keeps an eye out for where you are as soon as you open Google Maps for looking up a location or any other queries. Google tracks your location instantly by taking a snapshot to preserve the record for reference in future, the location saved is very accurate when it comes to longitude and latitude for the sake of precision.

Why Does Google Tracks Your Location?

Location history on Google is an effective means by which Google team gets to track its users. This tracking is justified by the fact that the history enables Google to serve its users better by keeping a record of their whereabouts to bring them news and research options most suited for an area. That is why Google does not allow you to bar the company from following your location. The Police Department and other law enforcement authorities also need location history for tracking criminals too for which they rely on Google.

A Google representative tried to justify the action in a statement to The Verge.

“Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt-in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time. As the story notes, we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like performing a Google search or use Google for driving directions.”

How to turn off location history:

People are unaware that turning off the location history and taking out the SIM Card is not sufficient to fool Google as the cell towers in vicinity keep sending the details to Google. To turn off the location history for sure, you need to go to the “Web and App Activity” to look deep into the strings to hide your location details from Google. Visiting myactivity.google.com will let you be sure of this as you can delete single data entries that you want to be removed or you can delete the complete activity log, depending on your needs. Stay tuned to know further about this as we are trying to find other concrete ways of switching off location history.