Who’s tracking you on your smartphone, what’s being recorded, and how it can be avoided

Over the last few years, engineers and designers have made some pretty amazing technological advancements to the smartphone device.

Once a gadget used simply for making calls, it quickly morphed into a communications hub, providing its users with the ability to not only speak to one another vocally, but also send text-based messages, conduct video chats, and more.

Oh, and that’s not even getting into the new benchmarks achieved, surpassed, and set again in terms of camera capabilities.

Yes, the smartphone is an awe-inspiring device, and it’s something that the general consumer has become quite attached to. Unfortunately, companies, government organizations, and hackers recognize this connection we all have to our personal devices, and have implemented intrusive methods for harvesting personal data from these devices.

The reasons behind why these groups want this information varies from being able to sell it to advertisers to stealing financial data for the purpose of committing online robbery, to outright spying. 

While this might enrage a good majority of users, the unfortunate truth nowadays is that so many organizations and groups out there are looking to exploit unsecured data that the best an average smartphone user can do is take some basic steps to limit the amount of data being made accessible to third-party onlookers. 

Below is a helpful infographic picked up from imgur that was posted by user neomam. The chart details who is tracking your smartphone and why it’s an issue. From there, neomam outlines how the tracker software works and various ways in which users can limit the data their devices are sharing. 

Via imgur

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