How to Give Consent (or Not) to Apple for Frequent Locations Data

This quote came from an Apple support website:

"Frequent Locations: Your iPhone will keep track of places you have recently been, as well as how often and when you visited them, in order to learn places that are significant to you. This data is kept solely on your device and won't be sent to Apple without your consent. It will be used to provide you with personalized services, such as predictive traffic routing."

My question is - how do you give or withdraw your consent for Apple to receive this data?

Thanks in advance............

If you are running iOS 8.3 then go to settings -> privacy -> Location Service and turn it off. You can also taylor which apps can use the location services if you don't want to turn it all off.

If you scroll to the bottom of the app list there is a system services that opens a second menu that will give you even more options to shut off.

I am not aware of anyway to "opt out" of data collection by apple if the service is on.

Lisa

lclev said:

If you are running iOS 8.3 then go to settings -> privacy -> Location Service and turn it off. You can also taylor which apps can use the location services if you don't want to turn it all off.

If you scroll to the bottom of the app list there is a system services that opens a second menu that will give you even more options to shut off.

I am not aware of anyway to "opt out" of data collection by apple if the service is on.

Lisa

Click to expand...

Thanks for your response. I've been down those lists that you describe, and I know how to work with all those options. What I don't know how to do is give or retract consent for Apple to use this frequent locations data. The paragraph I originally quoted implies that this data will not be sent to Apple without my consent. So how do I give (or not) my consent? Thanks........

I assume the "without consent" part means that it won't be sent until you explicitly give the phone consent to do so. I doubt that this is an instance in which implied consent is the name of the game.

The easy answer here is to simply disable location services as a whole but that's taking a sledge hammer to a stubborn nail. You can disable system service location collection (see here) which might be what you're looking for.

vansmith said:

I assume the "without consent" part means that it won't be sent until you explicitly give the phone consent to do so. I doubt that this is an instance in which implied consent is the name of the game.

The easy answer here is to simply disable location services as a whole but that's taking a sledge hammer to a stubborn nail. You can disable system service location collection (see here) which might be what you're looking for.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the website. That's pretty much the explanation that NBC gave on their newscast the other night, which is what got me started looking into this issue.

I don't want to disable location services or frequent locations. What I'm looking for is how do I explicitly give the phone consent to send the data to Apple?

Is this what you are looking for? Under Settings ->Privacy-> Diagnostics & Usage -> You can tell your phone to not send data. I shut mine off a long time ago probably due to something I read or some permission I did not want to give.

Lisa

durango said:

What I'm looking for is how do I explicitly give the phone consent to send the data to Apple?

Click to expand...

Wait, you want to send the data? In that case, I'm not sure you can. Any and all functionality around that data seems to be about disabling this.

lclev said:

Is this what you are looking for? Under Settings ->Privacy-> Diagnostics & Usage -> You can tell your phone to not send data. I shut mine off a long time ago probably due to something I read or some permission I did not want to give.

Lisa

Click to expand...

Good catch, Lisa. I missed that completely. I did have mine shut off, but I must have done that when I was setting up my phone and then forgot about it.

Thanks..........

vansmith said:

Wait, you want to send the data? In that case, I'm not sure you can. Any and all functionality around that data seems to be about disabling this.

Click to expand...

No, I don't want to send the data. But I thought if I could figure out how to send it, then I would know how to not send it.

Lisa above found the setting that I had missed, and mine was turned off.

Thanks for your responses.

vansmith said:

The easy answer here is to simply disable location services as a whole but that's taking a sledge hammer to a stubborn nail.

Click to expand...

Isn't using a sledge hammer your favorite method of operation??

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Isn't using a sledge hammer your favorite method of operation??

- Nick

Click to expand...

No, I prefer tools that let me bend.

“Sign in to iCloud”

On a similar note is it possible to stop forever being reminded to sign up to iCloud - I have an iCloud account but never use it and have it switched off on my iPad, except for "Find my iPad" but I keep getting the same message popping up “Sign in to iCloud” when ever I do anything on the iPad

Signing up for iCloud is different than signing in to iCloud. You should be signed in to iCloud if you wish to use it to find your iPad or iPhone in case it gets lost. No harm in doing so and it will also get rid of the message.

I did that along time ago, for just that reason, but it still keep asking me to sign in, particularly if I change a setting on something. I have no particular use for iCloud as I would rather back up to home hard drives, and sync my iPads and iPhone with the cables that came with them. If you sign into iCloud does that not mean that some/most my personal data/information is going up there as well?

If you sign into iCloud does that not mean that some/most my personal data/information is going up there as well?

Click to expand...

No, only the data you designate. Try signing out of iCloud and then sign in again to see if the warnings stop. Other users have had to do the same thing when that happens.

durango said:

This quote came from an Apple support website:

"Frequent Locations: Your iPhone will keep track of places you have recently been, as well as how often and when you visited them, in order to learn places that are significant to you. This data is kept solely on your device and won't be sent to Apple without your consent. It will be used to provide you with personalized services, such as predictive traffic routing."

My question is - how do you give or withdraw your consent for Apple to receive this data?

Click to expand...

You can't because you haven't yet given the consent.

As the notice above clearly states, the frequent locations data IS NOT SENT to Apple unless you use an App that requires Apple (as opposed to some other developer) to access that information. Currently, there are only two Apple apps I'm aware of that could possibly need this data -- Maps and Find My iPhone. On each of them, you are asked to give consent to use the data. If you haven't done that, then no frequent location data is being sent to Apple.

If for some reason you wish to revoke the ability of Maps to use location data -- which will render it useless, but that's clearly your intent -- then you go to Settings ->Privacy->Location Services, then scroll down the list to Maps and turn from "while using" to "never."

For Find My iPhone, you can disable this by scrolling down a bit further to "System Services," and disabling it there (and whatever other service you don't want using your location). Be aware this will have many (and probably unintended) consequences, but as you can see its all there for you to choose, which is nice.