Your iPhone Has A Map Of Places You've Visited

Here's something weird. Turns out iPhones keep track of your movements, which you can then view on a map. Maybe that could come in quite handy if you're ever trying to piece together your drunken antics from the night before.

The little-known feature uses Location Services to pull together a list of your real-world whereabouts, which you can then check out in the Settings area of your phone.

To access it, you'll need to head to the Privacy section in your Settings. In there you'll find Location Services, and that leads through to the System Services option.

Once inside you should see a list of cities and if you tap them, it'll show you all the locations Apple deems 'Significant' to you and your phone.

It'll also show how often you visited, and when, which could make some for shameful reading once the pubs reopen next weekend.

PA

Describing Location Services, Apple says: "Allow your iPhone to learn places significant to you in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, Photos and more."

But if the thought of being tracked by your phone gives you the heebie jeebies, Apple wants to lay users' minds at rest, and says the information can't be seen by anyone at the company.

Apple explains: "Significant Locations are encrypted and cannot be read by Apple."

The data is stored on your phone and is encrypted if it needs to leave the device. For extra security it's also not accessible via the iCloud and no one except you can see it.

If you're still not too keen on it, you can deactivate it, by simply switching off Significant Locations - or you can go the whole hog and opt out of Location Services. But if you do that you will also lose some of the extra features that the service provides.

Apple

You can also delete your history, which as you can probably guess, will clear all the data currently stored about your location, but won't stop Apple from collecting more information in the future, unless you also switch off Significant Locations or Location Services.

Topics: Technology, Apple

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]

@ClaireReid19