Relax: Instagram Did Not Turn on 'Precise Location' to Help People Stalk You
Have you seen warnings on social media this week about a recent iOS or Instagram update activating "Precise Location," which will help criminals track your whereabouts?
You can relax; Precise Location is not new, and it's intended to give you more control over how apps track your location. That said, Precise Location is on by default, and the internet freakout is a good reminder to check how the apps you use most are monitoring your activity.
Precise Location is a system-level setting in iOS and Android and applies to apps that use location data. Apple rolled it out in 2020 with iOS 14; Google followed suit in Android 12. It’s not limited to Instagram, though false(Opens in a new window) warnings about it appear to be proliferating there right now.
As Apple said during its 2020 WWDC keynote(Opens in a new window): “This year, we’re continuing to give you even more control. In addition to the option of sharing your precise location, you’ll have the option to only share your approximate location with apps.”
In a 2021 preview of Android 12, meanwhile, we wrote: “Apps that need to access Bluetooth will no longer require location info, and a new ‘approximate location’ option prevents apps from knowing your exact location.”
Most apps don’t really need to know your location, but in the years before Apple and Google cracked down on aggressive permission requests, a lot of random apps tapped into you location just because they could. That’s evolved in recent years. In iOS 13, for example, Apple added the option to have apps ask permission every time they wanted to use your location. Precise Location then appeared in iOS 14, which also required apps to ask users for their permission before they tracked people within individual
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