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Your cellular provider, for example, always knows where you’re at on their network, because your phone is checking for the strongest cell tower roughly every 7 seconds.

And rumor has it that the government has spyware that can turn your these GPS on if they want to spy on you.

So remember folks, whenever you have your cellphone with you, the government probably can get a record your location at any given time.

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What if you don't want your smartphone tracking you all the time?

Ken Colburn, Special for The Republic | azcentral.com Published 9:00 a.m. MT Sept. 1, 2017

How to keep apps from tracking your data

Tech Q&A: Understanding and managing smartphone location history

Turning off all of the location tracking systems on your smartphone would essentially render it useless

Question: Where do I turn off the constant location tracking in my smartphone?

Answer: Our smartphones have become a virtual human "electronic tag" that instead of being installed under our skin, is in our pockets and purses.

Precise locations, dates, times, durations and what we did before and after opening an app or website are just the beginning of what’s being tracked.

The very design of the device allows this to happen whether we want it to happen or not. Your cellular provider, for example, always knows where you’re at on their network, because your phone is checking for the strongest cell tower roughly every 7 seconds.

Turning off all of the location tracking systems on your smartphone would essentially render it useless, but you can somewhat control what gets shared or stored.

Personalized services

Google and Apple will espouse their ability to provide their users with "personalized services’" by allowing your smartphone to constantly track your location.

For example, it can detect that it’s the time of day you usually leave for work and automatically estimated your commute time and best route based on the current traffic conditions.

Apple’s frequent location data is only stored on the iPhone, while Google stores your location history on your Android handset and in your Google account.

For the most part, someone would either have to gain access to your smartphone or your Google account to see your detailed location history.

Keeping location data in perspective

Frankly, if someone does gain access to your smartphone or Google account, your location history should be the least of your worries. Your email account and its contents are far more valuable to a cyber-criminal than your location data.

If your concern is that your spouse will be able to see your every move, then that’s a completely different situation that may be dictated by your relationship.

Whatever your reasons are for not wanting your location data tracked and stored, it’s pretty easy to turn it off.

iPhone frequent locations setting

Most iPhone users are likely familiar with the "Location Services" options in the Settings menu (Settings/Privacy/Location Services) that allows you to individually control which apps have access to Location Services.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the listing of your apps, you should see an option for "System Services." Tap it and look at the bottom of the next screen of options to tap on "Frequent Locations."

You should now see a toggle to turn on or off "Frequent Locations" and the "History" that’s stored on your phone with an option to Clear History if want to wipe the data.

Android users will need to adjust setting in two different areas: on your smartphone and in your Google account.

Android devices have slightly different Settings menus depending upon your device, so look for (or search for) "Google Location History," which is usually under a Privacy or Location submenu.

When you toggle the switch to off, it simply stops storing your locations but does not delete your history.

For complete instructions to manage or delete your Location History, go to https://goo.gl/gKuAs3

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In Warrantless Cellphone Search Case, It's the Trump Administration vs. the 4th Amendment The Supreme Court will arguments in Carpenter v. U.S. in the coming term.

Damon Root|Sep. 1, 2017 3:12 pm

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments sometime in its coming term in one of the most significant Fourth Amendment cases in years.

At issue in Carpenter v. United States is the question of whether the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment when it obtained, without a search warrant, the cellphone records of suspected armed robber Timothy Carpenter. With those records, federal officials identified the cell towers that handled the suspect's calls and then proceeded to trace back his whereabouts during the time periods in which his alleged crimes were committed. That information was later used against Carpenter in court.

The Trump administration strongly urged the Supreme Court not to hear this case. Why? Because "a person has no Fourth Amendment interest in records created by a communications-service provider in the ordinary course of business that pertain to the individual's transactions with the service provider," the administration told the Court in its brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari.

What is more, the administration argued, "the acquisition of a business's records does not constitute a Fourth Amendment 'search' of an individual customer even when the records reflect information pertaining to that customer."

This cramped view of the Fourth Amendment is extremely dangerous to the privacy rights of all Americans in the age of the smart phone. As the Supreme Court recognized in the 2014 case of Riley v. California, in which the Court unanimously told the police to "get a warrant" before searching cellphones incident to arrest, "modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life.' The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought."

Consider the sort of information a typical cellphone user shares with a cellphone company. It is much more than just numbers dialed or texted; it includes email addresses of correspondents, the URLs of websites visited, and, of course, the physical locations from which the device itself was accessed. Shouldn't the Fourth Amendment offer some genuine protection for such highly personal private information?

As a back-up argument, the Trump administration claims that even if the Fourth Amendment is held to apply to the cell-site information at issue in this case, the government's actions against Carpenter should still be ruled constitutional on the grounds that they are a "reasonable" exception to the normal requirements of the Fourth Amendment.

"Society has a strong interest in both promptly apprehending criminals and exonerating innocent suspects as early as possible during an investigation," the Trump administration argued. According to the government, in other words, it takes too long and causes too much hassle for law enforcement officials to bother getting a search warrant in cases like this.

But that view turns the Fourth Amendment on its head. One of the main purposes of the Fourth Amendment—as well as other guarantees in the Bill of Rights—is to restrain overzealous government agents before they run roughshod over the rights of individuals. The Trump administration, by contrast, wants to loosen such constitutional restrictions on the cops.

It is a heartening sign that the Supreme Court agreed to hear this important case over the objections of the Trump administration. Hopefully the Court will ultimately reject the administration's disfiguring interpretations and issue a decision that gives the Fourth Amendment its due.