3 Geolocation

Geolocation is the ability of your device (computer, tablet, phone) to know your location. Mobile phone companies know which cell tower you are connected to, and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) know the location of your home.

Your device’s operating system will typically have a global setting that you can configure as to whether you would like to share your location with apps. If you say yes to the global setting, the first time you use an app, typically the app will ask you if you wish to share your location with this particular app, and remember your answer, so it won’t ask you again. You can choose to share your location with some apps but not others if you so wish.

Sharing your location with an app, for example a map app, means the app will be able to determine your location, and in this case will be able to show your location on the map. If you are out for a walk or hike on an unfamiliar route, the app could track your route, making it easy to backtrack and return to your starting location.

You can share your location with family and friends, so that they can see where you are. My wife and I find this feature useful when we are meeting somewhere, as often one of us is running late and when we try to call the other person, they often don’t hear their mobile phone ring. Sharing our location allows us to see if we have both arrived in our meeting location, and if not, how far away the other person is.

You can also temporarily share your location (e.g. specify a time limit, such as 30 minutes). For example, if a delivery driver is having trouble locating your home, and gives you a call on your mobile phone, you could temporarily share your location for long enough to enable delivery of the package.

Geolocation also has privacy implications if others have access to this data, or demand access to it. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government required citizens to download an app that tracked the citizen’s location, and the government used this to ensure citizens stayed home if they were in quarantine, and if they were allowed out for grocery shopping, that they completed their shopping and returned home within the time they were allotted.

Media Attributions

• “Geopositioning” by Éric Chassaing is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Licence