They Have Your Data. Here’s How They Track You with It
Someone can say where you were last Tuesday at 8:42 PM and who you were probably with. Not because they broke into your phone, but because your phone was doing exactly what it was built to do.
Topic
Location
A collection of 13 issues
Android Security (Samsung)
You cannot harden a phone you have already been living on. This one starts at the recovery menu with a wipe and works forward tap by tap, written against a Samsung S22 running One UI 6.2.2.
Faraday Bags
A bag that genuinely works turns your phone into a brick until you take it out. That is the whole feature, and it is also the whole complaint. Which bags and key fob boxes earn their price, and when the trade is worth making.
Mock Location Apps for Android: A Deep Dive
Five Android apps that let you tell every other app on your phone you are somewhere else — for testing, for region locks, or simply to keep your real position out of somebody's log.
Android "10" List
Ten things to change on a stock Android phone before you carry it anywhere. None of them take long, and the defaults were chosen for someone else's benefit — starting with everything under Location.
Android Auto vs. Android Automotive OS: A Comprehensive Comparison
Two products, one brand name, and a distinction most drivers never notice until they are shopping for a car. Working out which one is in the dashboard tells you whose software is running and what it is wired into.
Account Privacy Dashboards
Apple, Google, and Microsoft each publish a page showing what they hold on you. Three links and half an hour tells you what is in the file, starting with whether Maps is still logging where you go.
Our vehicles are spying on us.
A modern car is a phone on wheels that you cannot factory reset. It records where it went, and it remembers the phones plugged into it — including the rental you dropped off last week.
Disable Location Services (Android)
Precision is what makes location data worth selling. You will never be invisible to the network itself, but you can stop the apps on your phone from quietly building a record of where you sleep.
Disable Ad Tracking on Apple Devices (2026)
Apple sells advertising too, and the profile used to aim it is built on your own device. Three separate switches, in three different places, and turning off one does nothing to the other two.