When you use your Android smartphone for the first time, you’ll be asked about location services and whether you want to turn them on. Google and your carrier will ask you to approve their own location services as well. What you might not know is that there are other options for location services with Android that can affect your device’s security. To that end, let’s look at how to change some of these settings.

Photos and GPS tagging

Your Android smartphone gives you the ability to attach GPS coordinates to the pictures you take, known as geo-locating or GPS tagging. This lets you arrange pictures in albums by location. Geo-locating images in itself isn’t a bad thing, but you can get into trouble when you broadcast sensitive locations to the world. For instance, a picture of your expensive watch with a GPS tag of your house isn’t the best idea.

Here are four ways to control geo-locating photos:

  1. Go to your camera settings and you’ll find an on/off toggle.
  2. Simply go to Settings > Location and from there you can decide if you want the location saved along with your images.
  3. Download an EXIF editor and manually remove the location information from specific images.
  4. You can also turn off location services altogether by going to Settings > Location.

Discrete location settings

Apart from location settings in photos and GPS tagging, Android actually has three discrete location settings that allow you to set how accurately you want location reporting to be. You can find these at Settings > Location. Note that this affects your smartphone’s battery life immensely.

  • High accuracy – This uses the GPS radio in your phone to pinpoint its exact location using data from satellites while making use of nearby Wi-Fi and cellular networks too.
  • Battery saving – This mode only uses Wi-Fi networks and mobile networks to identify locations, and while it might not be as accurate, it will help your battery last longer.
  • Device sensors only – This only uses the GPS radio to find you. It may take a little more time to find your location since it’s not using nearby Wi-Fi and mobile networks to get your general location first. This also uses more battery.

Having your location settings turned off will not only help keep your smartphone’s security intact, but also help strengthen your battery life. Interested in learning more about Android phones and their functions? We have solutions for you and your business.