How To See Where Your Android Device Has Been Tracking You

 

Laughing at iPhone users for having their every move recorded by their iPhone? Well, you may want to bite your tongue cause, that’s right, Android tracks your moves as well. Your Android device records your location and even Wifi checkins and saves them to the device’s cache (for a faster map experience among other reasons). Now, we’re pretty sure this information is only transmitted to Google if you selected the option to allow Google to use your anonymous location data (which you should have seen when logging in to your Android device for the first time) but it’s still interesting to see what your device is saving on it’s own. Here’s how to check where you’re device is checking in.

EDIT: I’d like to just add here that this is NOT meant to insight any kind of panic. I, for one, personally don’t see a reason to worry with any of this location information. To be honest, your carrier (T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) has had access to this kind of information for years and years and it hasn’t made a difference in your life (unless your a federal criminal and they used it as evidence against you in court, then you might not be too happy about it).

The only scare here is if this information was accessible to other people easily (like a jealous spouse, stalker, etc.). But, since this app requires you to be rooted and to give it permission before it can run, you have proof right there that this location information isn’t very easy to get access to. The iPhone tracking information is easier to get access to since it can be accessed by running a program on your computer with iTunes on it instead of from the device itself, so that’s a little bit of a problem. But, even that can be stopped pretty easily, so again, no need to panic everyone. Still, it is interesting to see how much your device knows about you…

I. Before You Begin

1. This does NOT share any of the information, nor even transmit it off of your device. It simply shows you the files that are already stored on your device.

For more information on the program itself, head to the developer’s page here.

2. Your device MUST be rooted for this app to work! Head to our How To’s to find out how to root your device.

Thanks to Mopodo on XDA for creating this interesting app!

II. Uncover the Location Cache

1. On your Android device, head to the Android Market.

2. Search for the app Location Cache then download and install it. (You can view it here on your computer).

3. Once installed, open the app and click view by either map or list.