WHO CAN TRACK YOUR IPHONE?

7 VULNERABILITIES YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW YOU HAVE

- BY CULLEN THOMAS

Did you know that an iPhone's location can be tracked even when it's powered down? Here are the seven main ways that a phone might give away your location to someone who is trying to find, track, or surveil you, and what you can do about each of them.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA KNOWS YOUR BUSINESS

Your social media profiles make public a huge amount of information about you. One of the first things you can do if you're looking to cut down on data people have access to is remove and delete old profiles on platforms you do not use and reduce the amount of information you share on the ones you do use.

If you take photos or videos and post them to social media, then anyone watching your feed may identify your location from those images. The same social media may reveal your friends, family, and professional contacts. When friends post photos of you, those photos may also give away your location and activities, even without your consent or knowledge. Reporters, spies, private eyes, and law enforcement refer to this kind of tracking as Open Sources Intelligence, or OSINT, for short, but it doesn't need a fancy acronym to help out a stalker.

The solution to this problem requires you to establish the privacy of your private life. To do this, curate your public life with care. When you share a photo from your iPhone (Photos app > select > select a photo > tap the share icon to open the share sheet) tap Options and toggle off Location. This will remove the location metadata from the photo before it's sent, but it won't hide details of the photo that might give away your location, such as road signs or business names.

2. WEBSITES AND ADVERTISERS TRACK AND PROFILE YOU