The expert told why it is necessary to disable geolocation on a smartphone

The geolocation function, which is equipped with almost all modern smartphones, provides us with many important advantages. It is used not only by navigation applications, but also by social networks, various mobile assistants and security programs. But can we say that geolocation acts only in our interests? The journalists of the agency "Prime" asked the expert about this.

Specialist of the NAFI “Digital Citizen”platform Vladimir Gritsenko warned Russians against the abuse of geolocation and told why it is better to disable this function and use it only in case of direct need.

Vladimir said that the most active smartphone geolocation is not used by gadget owners, but by application developers. Many programs can transmit information about a person's preferences to third parties, which will then be used for advertising purposes.

At the same time, the expert clarified that if geolocation is disabled, and the application does not have permission to enable it independently, then it will not be possible to collect such data. To prevent programs from using this function at their own discretion, you should carefully review the requests that appear when installing the software. Many programs unobtrusively require access to geolocation, and we, without looking, provide it to them.

Another important reason to disable geolocation is to increase the battery life of a mobile device. This function is very voracious and quickly helps the smartphone to discharge. You can always turn on geolocation if you need it – it will only take a few seconds, but leaving it to work constantly, you lose much more time and nerves.