3 ways to improve cell phone privacy in 5 minutes or less

cuz ain't nobody got time for that

There are a few specific mechanisms where our privacy can be compromised. I like to think of these as the “big fish” to fry when it comes to improving your privacy. These are:

• Your cell phone

• Your computer

• Smart home devices

Yes, there are other ways your privacy can be compromised too, but these 3 things contain so much data about you: your habits, your life, and your family, that anything else pales in comparison.

I’m going to do 3 separate newsletters, one for each of these topics. Each one will give you 5 things you can do in 5 minutes or less to improve your privacy.

Today, it’s the cell phone. Note that specific instructions are going to be for iPhone, since that’s what I have. If you have a different type of phone, I’m sorry - hopefully you can search for the equivalent control on your device.

I always try to come at privacy from an angle of practicality. If it takes forever, people aren’t going to do it. If it severely impacts the way we show up in the world, people aren’t likely to do it either. I like to focus on quick wins that provide tangible privacy benefits. In that vein, here you go - 5 things to do to improve privacy on your phone in 5 minutes or less.

1. Don’t allow apps to track by default with this setting

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security> Tracking on your phone. Make sure this slides is turned OFF. In the pic below, the tracking is still ON, it just requires that every app must ask first. If you don’t want them to ask in the first place, slide this slider OFF.

This doesn’t completely block tracking, it just blocks your MaID or mobile ad identifier, from those who use it to track. There are still many other ways to track you but this setting is an easy place to start.

Time required: 1 minute

2. Revoke bulk access to your precise location

Very few apps need constant access to precise location to function, but many apps collect this information. One app where this is useful is maps. I still only consent to precise location when I’m using the app. 99% of other apps, I have location completely OFF and it can ask me when it needs it. Location, especially precise location, can track you down to what room of your house you’re in. Don’t give that away to random apps, please.

Turn Location Services on or off in Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Go through each app and depending on what you use it for (does it need to know your location to be useful?) turn it to “off”, “when shared” (this means you need to provide consent each time), or “never”. FWIW, I have apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Messages, set as “never”. I use “when using” for things like maps and camera.

Keep location services ON or else a lot of stuff won’t work. But go through each app and choose when the location is shared. Most don’t need constant access. Actually, none of them do!

Time required: Depends on number of apps you have, let’s say 3 minutes.

3. Don’t share your all of your photos

When you use an app for the first time, there’s a good chance a little pop up will come up and ask you if you want to grant it access to all of your photos. And of course you just tapped okay, because you want to use the app nownownow. Hey, it’s ok. It’s designed this way - to minimize friction to get people’s data. But unless the app is very photo heavy, do NOT grant it access to all of your photos. Photos are loaded with exif data that give the exact location it was taken and what device it was taken with. Not to mention, images are easily scanned and tagged by machine learning, so much so that one photo I had uploaded into google photos recently was recognized as having a certain brand of cereal on the shelf in the back of it. Ugh.

I have certain apps where I post photos. Instagram is one. I don’t give instagram access to all of my photos. It requires a couple of extra taps (which is annoying, I will say), but I choose only the photos I want to share. It’s worth the extra steps NOT to hand over your entire image library (!!!) to data-sucking apps.

The setting for this lives within each individual app, so you will need to go into each one and choose which apps to revoke photo consent from, if you’ve already granted it. I would recommend removing it from apps like X, snapchat, tiktok, and facebook. Again, only share the photos you are going to upload to each platform.

Time required: 5 minutes or less, depending on how many apps you have shared your photos with already.

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If you found this interesting and want to read more, please subscribe. Next up, I’ll do a post like this for your computer.

Thanks for reading! -Hannah