Hiding in not-so-plain sight, deep within the depths of your iPhone’s settings (seven layers deep, to be exact) is a level of location tracking that very few iPhone users are aware of and probably won’t feel comfortable with.
Sure, many of us know that our iPhone generally tracks us when we use certain apps to enable it to share personalized information like the local weather, coffee shop recommendations, and more.
But in a quick survey I ran with some friends, not one person (out of dozens of people that I surveyed) knew where or how to navigate to this specific screen that I’m talking about here. It’s called the Significant Locations list.
But when I first discovered this hidden location list, I felt it was a bit much, to say the least. The Significant Locations list shows a minute-by-minute route history of my exact whereabouts in every location I’ve been in over the past few years.
Step 1: Open the Settings app.
Step 2: Navigate to the Privacy section (small white hand, blue background).
Step 3: Click on Location Services.
Step 4: Scroll all the way to the bottom and click on System Services.
Step 5: Navigate to Significant Locations.
Remember: Apple says that this data is kept private. But if you’re uncomfortable with this list, you can simply move the Significant Locations switch to the off position. If you really want to wipe it clean, turn it on, scroll to the bottom of the history, and select Clear History.
This post is more of an FYI than a serious dig at Apple. At the end of the day, we are responsible for letting technology creep further and further into our lives, because we keep valuing its personalized benefits over the less useful but more private alternate universe.
Do some digging on your own to find out what settings are turned on and which you’ve turned off. Find out what settings you can control and what exactly they’re doing. You control your own tech destiny. This is just one quick PSA about an area of your iPhone you probably hadn’t explored too much. Technology’s ability to improve our lives in nearly all aspects is clear — but we as a society are healthiest as a whole when we fully understand the implications of how and why it all works.
This post has been updated to clarify how the Significant Locations feature works.