Google Photos Hidden Map Tracks Places You've Been to, Stores Photos You Took at a Certain Location

Nhx T., Tech Times 03 January 2021, 09:01 am

Since the addition of the global positioning system (GPS) on handheld devices such as your smartphones, companies, especially software developers, had used it to their advantage, tracking our locations both to use the apps and to provide us with the right ads, where they often get their revenue from.

(Photo : Brett Jordan from Pexels)
Besides Google Maps, another Google app uses your location to track you.

Google Photos Location Tracking

Almost every app would require your location, and big companies like Google are no exception.

Google is known to use its users' location for a number of things, most prominently Google Maps, but besides the software, there is another Google software that uses your location and has a hidden map, as per Fox News, and it's none other than Google Photos.

Many who use Google Photos probably don't know how much the app collects.

It's a great place to save and edit some images, but it also apparently uses your phone's location and tracks your every move, and saves the images you've taken at a certain location you've previously gone to.

Here's how to check if the app is using your location:

Open the app on your device.
Tap Search at the bottom part of the screen.
Tap View All, found under the Places section.

How to Turn Location Tracking Off

If you've turned on location tracking for photos or didn't know it existed and hasn't turned it off yet, you will find folders of images that were taken in a specific place, and you can even tap on a specific folder and it will open a map with location dots of where the images have precisely been taken in.

Software that can access your location isn't always a bad thing, but it can be a little creepy and many smartphone users aren't exactly happy with the thought of being tracked.

Sometimes, these kinds of data can also be leaked or acquired by hackers, so if you want to maximize your privacy and security, you can turn the feature off quite easily.

According to Google Support, you can go to your device's Camera app and then go to the Settings, then check whether the location setting is turned on or off and choose off if it's on.

Google Maps Timeline

Besides Google Photos, the same data is also available on Google Maps' website, according to the news outlet, which gives you a timeline of where you've been in the past few days, months, and even years.

You can check it out by going to the app's official website, then opening the menu on the top left corner, and choosing Your Timeline.

Once you click on the feature, it will bring up a map with location dots of where you've gone, you can also change the year, month, or input the exact date to show where you've checked into on that particular day.

Again, if you don't want such data acquired from you, you can use your PC to turn it off.

Go to the Google Maps website, then Settings, and Your Timeline.
Find Manage Location History at the bottom of the screen and turn off the feature.
Make use of the Auto-Delete option to remove images and data acquired from you from images older than three months to 36 months.

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Written by: Nhx Tingson