Your iPhone can be set to show your real-time location to anyone. It also tags your location in photos you take, and many apps try to access this data . But how can someone track your location through your iPhone?
Find my iPhone
The “Find my iPhone” feature allows you to locate your iPhone if you lose it. Anyone with access to Apple ID account can access this feature, so it’s important to set a unique password and ensure that no one else has access to your account.
If you have Family Sharing set up, your family members can also track your device's location with the default settings. To track your iPhone, they'll need to use either the "Find My" app for iPhone, iPad , and Mac or the "Find My" tool on Apple's iCloud.com
To check Find My iPhone, open the Settings, tap your name at the top of the Settings screen, and tap “Find My.” You can check if Find My iPhone is turned on from here, and also choose whether to share your location with family members listed here.
Sharing locations with other people
You can also choose to share your location with other people outside of your family group. For example, friends can share their locations with each other so they can meet up more easily. This feature is called “Find My Friends,”but now location sharing with both family members and friends is being moved to the Find My app. To check if you’ve shared your iPhone’s location with anyone, open the “Find My” app on your iPhone. Tap the “People” at the bottom of the window and view the people in the list. Your family members will appear here, as will anyone you’ve shared your location with. To remove a person from this list, swipe left and tap the red trash can icon.
Apps that access your location
Apps can access your location. To see these apps, go to: Settings > Privacy > Location Services. An app that has “always” access to your location can access it even when you’re not aware of it, while apps set to “while in use” can access your location only when you’re using them. You can also require an app to ask for your consent each time it wants to access your location.
There are many ways that some apps can always access your location. For example, a weather app could constantly update you with the weather based on your current location, but you should be careful about which apps you choose to access your location.
To change an app's location permissions, tap it in the list here and set a new option: "Never," "Ask next time," "When app is in use," or "Always."
Photos with location data
Many of you may not know it, but photos can reveal your location to others. But how does this happen? When you take a photo, camera automatically adds geotagging data to the photo. So when you view your photos, you can see where you took each photo.
Some services automatically “scrub” this location data from a photo when you upload it. However, not all do, and if you send a photo directly to someone via SMS, email , or otherwise, that person can potentially see the location data in your photo and determine where that photo was taken.
You can stop your iPhone camera from storing your location information in photos you take. You can also remove location data when sharing a photo. From the Photos, tap the Share, tap Options at the top of the sharing screen, and turn off Location.
Bluetooth Beacons
Nearby Bluetooth can also be used to track you as you move around. For example, they could be used to track the movements of shoppers in a shopping mall, gathering a lot of data for targeted advertising. So you should think carefully before granting Bluetooth access to apps that request it, as these apps could exploit this to track your phone's location when you're near such beacons. You can check which apps already have access to your phone's Bluetooth radio by going to: Settings > Privacy > Bluetooth.
Cellular towers
Your cellular carrier can determine your exact location. It can do this by measuring the relative signal strengths of your phone to three different cellular towers. This is similar to GPS. If you use a phone and have a cellular connection, there is no way to avoid it.
Additionally, mobile carriers have been found to be selling location data to questionable third-party companies, but have said they will stop doing so. In 2020, the FCC proposed a $200 million fine on AT&T, Spring, Verizon, and T-Mobile for selling their customers' locations.
