The thought of someone tracking your every motion is scary, whether it'southward your employer, government, or even a stalker.

All smartphones on the market today come up with built-in location services that could exist used to reveal location data. But what if you don't want to share your location data with anyone? If y'all disable location services on your telephone, is it nonetheless possible for information technology to be tracked?

Read on to observe out whether your telephone can be tracked subsequently y'all disable location services.

Can Your Telephone Be Tracked If Location Services Are Off?

The question "if location services are off can I be tracked?" is a technical one to answer, after all, turning off location services on your phone is supposed to make it untraceable. But this is not ever the case, as there are other ways that your device tin can notwithstanding exist tracked. And then, tin a telephone be tracked when turned off?

To be fair, turning off the congenital-in location service on your device does a good chore of concealing your location. However, trackers tin can use other technologies and techniques to reveal your device location, whether or not location services are turned on.

Iv Ways Your Telephone Tin can Exist Tracked Without GPS

LG Phones

Turning off location services on your device works well to keep your device location subconscious, but only to an extent. There are other technologies and techniques that can be used to track your phone even with location services turned off. Allow's talk near some of them below.

1. Cell Carrier Towers

Yeah. They're everywhere. Jail cell carriers can track your phone's location by identifying the towers yous're connected to and measuring the time filibuster that a bespeak takes to make a circular trip between the towers and your phone. This delay is and then calculated and converted into a specific distance or range, which returns a fairly accurate phone location.

This works very well because your phone (when on) stays in constant connectedness with nearby cell towers.

2. Public Wi-Fi Networks

Free Wi-Fi networks are all the rage these days. They're everywhere, and it can be tempting to connect to ane when yous accept a wearisome connection. Merely hither'south the thing: public Wi-Fi networks are another way your device's location can be tracked, fifty-fifty with location services turned off.

Most free Wi-Fi providers collect your device's media access control (MAC) address in exchange for the connection. Providers can utilise your phone's MAC address to keep logs of the places you visit whenever you connect with whatsoever hotspot from the same provider.

3. StingRays

StingRays (also known as cell-site simulators) function a lot like cell towers, except their only use is to track your phone instead of providing you with a real network connection.

A StingRay simulates a cell tower to get nearby mobile devices to connect to it. StingRays are mostly used by constabulary enforcement to track devices in a given area. They broadcast stronger signals than prison cell towers, which forces mobile phones to disconnect from legitimate prison cell towers and connect and ping to them instead.

stingray
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

But similar with legitimate cell towers, your phone's location tin then be deduced by measuring and converting the fourth dimension it takes for the signal to make a round trip between your phone and the StingRay.

iv. Spyware and malware

Pre-installed malware can also be used to track your device even when your GPS is turned off. The about common way this malware gains access to your device is through a Trojan horse, accessing your organization through a backstairs.

The Skygofree malware tracks the location of the device it's installed on and disguises information technology as an update to improve the user'southward internet speed.

Once installed, Skygofree tracks the location of the device it's installed on, turns on audio recording, controls Wi-Fi networks as well equally manages apps like Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber, and Whatsapp.

How to Stop Your Phone From Beingness Tracked

There are many reasons why you may want to finish your telephone from being tracked. Information technology could be for privacy and sometimes fifty-fifty for security reasons.

Thus, having answered the "can you lot rail a phone if the location is off?" question, it's important to know how you tin can protect your device from being tracked. Beneath are seven ways to do so:

phone with padlock
Image Credit: maxkabakov/Depositphotos | VectorStory/Depositphotos

1. Turn Off Wi-Fi In Public Places

Most smartphones generally take a connection preference for Wi-Fi networks. Yous may take experienced a time when your device automatically switched from using your mobile data to using an available Wi-Fi network. This happens rather often if your Wi-Fi is always on.

Disabling your phone's Wi-Fi connection when in public places eliminates the risk of your device automatically connecting to a Wi-Fi network that collects location data.

ii. Turn off GPS

At that place are ways your device could still be tracked fifty-fifty after turning off location services but not turning information technology off is worse. Turning off location services on your phone provides a layer of security against the most common location trackers.

3. Browse Using a VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) enables you to browse the internet anonymously by creating a individual network from a public cyberspace connection. When y'all utilize a VPN while browsing, it encrypts your internet data, hiding your IP address and physical location. This way, yous're covered even if you visit a site that collects company location data.

four. Mind Your Download Sites

Only install apps from official stores. There are other ways malware could be distributed, only disabling the installation of apps from third-political party sources and minding your download sites is the all-time way to go on them out.

Yous can besides install an antivirus to better secure your device from malicious apps and files, suspicious websites, and dangerous links.

5. Scrutinize App Permissions

All apps require sure permissions to function properly. But you should exist wary of dubious permission requests. When an app that doesn't require your location data to function requests for location permission, that's a sign that the app may be doing more than it's supposed to.

Uninstall any app that requests more permissions than you lot think is reasonable. You lot can discover replacements on the app shop if you admittedly need to use the part.

6. Keep Your Device'due south Software Up-To-Engagement

I of the best ways to keep your device secure is past regularly updating your software. Operating system updates usually include security patches that gear up vulnerabilities in the code. So, if a new exploit is found, you're less likely to be affected if your software is up-to-date.

7. Factory Reset

A factory reset is a concluding resort if you lot call up your device has been compromised. Doing then will delete all the data on your telephone, so be sure to back up everything before you proceed. If you don't already know how to reset your Android or iOS device, our guides on how to reset an iOS or Android device will help y'all.

Keep in mind that a factory reset will just work if the malicious software is not actively running in the groundwork or if it's non installed on your device as system software.

How to End Your Jail cell Carrier From Tracking Your Phone'southward Location

Yous've probably already noticed that none of the tips shared to a higher place can protect your phone from being tracked by your service provider. There's an explanation for that.

It is because your phone needs to be in abiding advice with nearby jail cell towers to function properly. The just manner to stop your device from existence tracked by your jail cell carrier is by switching information technology off— and removing the battery.

This is the only way you can exist guaranteed that your device is not existence tracked. Anyone trying to runway your device after information technology's been switched off will only be able to trace information technology to the location information technology was before it was switched off. Which, ideally, should not be your habitation address.

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