Many social media platforms allow you to check in and broadcast your location, or automatically add your location to photos and posts. Geolocation or geo-tagging features on social networks is not the safest feature to initiate. You could be telling a stalker exactly where to find you or telling a crook that you’re not home.

Google is a unique resource, albeit one with some substantial drawbacks in terms of how comprehensively it catalogs your activities, from your search history to your geolocation. The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo offers similar results with no tracking, reducing the risk of sensitive personal information falling into the wrong hands.

If you have a Snapchat account and you open the Snap Map, your location will be shared. That means your friends — or users who are not your friends, if your privacy settings allow it — can see exactly where you’re located on the map. If you don’t want to be on the Snap Map, […]

If you take a picture with your smartphone and post it to the internet, it is likely that it contains a geotag, which is location-disclosing metadata. Keep your exact whereabouts private by disabling automatic geotagging on your device. To do this on an iOS device: Go to Settings. Go to Privacy. Tap Location Services. Tap […]

Privacy-minded users may already be aware of services and browsers like DuckDuckGo. Now, this search engine offers private route planning. To use this feature, enter a location in the search bar. Click on the resulting map and select “Directions.” Route options will be displayed based on your anonymized current location.

Some apps have access to the mobile device’s location services and thus have access to the user’s approximate physical location. For apps that require access to location data to function, consider limiting this access to when the app is in use only.