Who can see your location? A 10 minute family privacy audit

The four layers, in order of how much they see

Before touching a single setting, it helps to know what you are looking at. Location sharing on a modern phone happens at four levels, and they are genuinely independent of each other.

1. 1The operating system. Apple's Find My and Google's location sharing live below the app layer. They are built into the phone, they can share your position continuously with named people, and they do not appear in a list of installed apps because they are not one.
2. 2Family locator apps. Anything you deliberately installed to see where people are, including Be Closer. These are visible, opt in, and usually the easiest layer to reason about because you chose them on purpose.
3. 3Social and messaging apps. Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and others each have their own location features, sometimes live, sometimes attached to a post. This is the layer that surprises parents most.
4. 4Photo metadata. Every photo your phone takes can carry the exact coordinates where it was taken, and that data travels with the file when you send it, upload it, or post it somewhere that does not strip it.

One sentence rule for the whole audit: if you did not choose it this month, re-choose it or turn it off. Old permissions are the problem, not new ones.

Nothing on your phone should be able to say where you are unless a person you can name asked for it and you said yes.

Layer one: the operating system

Start here, because this layer is the most powerful and the least visible. It shares continuously, it survives app deletions, and on both platforms it can be set up once and then quietly forgotten for years.

On iPhone

1. 1Open the Find My app and tap People. Everyone listed here can see your live position, indefinitely, until you remove them.
2. 2Tap each name and check whether sharing is set to share indefinitely or for a limited period. Remove anyone who is there from an old trip, an ex partner, a former flatmate, or a school project.
3. 3Go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services. Scroll the full list of apps. This is the master ledger.
4. 4Check System Services at the bottom of that list. It controls things like location based suggestions and significant locations, and most people have never opened it.
5. 5Inside System Services, look at Significant Locations. Your phone keeps a private history of places you visit often. It is encrypted and local, but you can clear it and turn it off if you would rather it did not exist.

On Android

1. 1Open the Google Maps app, tap your profile picture, then Location sharing. Anyone listed can see you live. Same rule applies: remove anyone you would not actively re-invite today.
2. 2Go to Settings, then Location, then App location permissions. Review every app in the allowed lists.
3. 3In the same Location menu, open Location services and look at Google Location Accuracy, Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth scanning. Scanning stays on for some phones even when location is off, which is worth knowing.
4. 4Visit your Google Account activity controls and check Location History, sometimes called Timeline. If it is on, Google keeps a map of where the phone has been. You can pause it and delete the history.

What while using the app actually means

Both platforms offer roughly the same three choices, and the wording hides a real difference. Getting this right removes most of the anxiety about the app layer.

• Never. The app cannot read your position at all. Anything location based in the app simply will not work.
• Ask next time. A one off grant. Useful for an app you use twice a year, like a parking app on holiday.
• While using the app. The app can read your position only when it is open on screen, or briefly just after. It cannot follow you around during the day.
• Always. The app can read your position in the background, including when the phone is in your pocket. This is what a family locator needs to function, and it is not appropriate for a shopping app.

The simple rule is that only apps whose entire purpose is knowing where you are should be set to Always. Everything else belongs on While using or Never. Both platforms also let you share an approximate rather than a precise position, which is a good default for weather, news and retail apps.

If you want the longer explanation of how the phone works out its position in the first place, we wrote that up separately in how your phone knows where it is.

Layer three: social apps, the one that surprises parents

This is where family audits usually find something unexpected, and it is almost never malicious. It is a feature that was switched on during setup and then forgotten.

• Snapchat. Snap Map can show a friend list your live position when the app is opened. Ghost Mode hides it. Check who is in the audience list, not just whether the feature is on.
• Instagram. Location tags on posts and stories are voluntary, but they are also sticky. Check whether tagging is happening by habit on posts from home.
• WhatsApp and Messenger. Both support live location sharing inside a chat for a set duration. Sharing that started as fifteen minutes can be extended to eight hours in a single tap.
• Fitness and running apps. Public activity feeds can reveal a home address by showing where every run starts and ends.

Ask two questions per app rather than trying to master every menu. First, can this app share my position with anyone other than the company. Second, who is currently in that audience. If the answers are no and nobody, move on.

The conversation with a teenager goes better if it is not framed as an inspection. We covered the tone that works in talking to teens about location sharing, and the short version is that you audit your own phone in front of them first.

Layer four: the photos you have already sent

Photo metadata is the quietest layer. Your camera writes the coordinates into the image file, and unless something strips them, they travel with the picture.

• Most large social platforms strip location data when you upload, but this is a courtesy and not a guarantee.
• Sending a photo as a file attachment, by email, or through some messaging apps often preserves the full metadata.
• On iPhone, the share sheet has an Options control at the top where you can turn off Location before sending.
• On Android, the Google Photos share flow includes a setting to remove location data from shared items.
• You can also turn off location tagging in the camera app entirely if you do not need it for organising photos.

How Be Closer fits into this picture

It would be strange to write an audit guide and skip our own product, so here it is plainly. Be Closer is a layer two app. It shares your position with the people in your private circle and with nobody else. There is no public map, no discovery feature, and no way for a stranger to find you inside the app.

• Everyone in a circle can see that they are in it, and everyone can see the same map. There is no hidden mode.
• You control whether you are sharing, and turning sharing off is visible to the circle rather than silent, because a map that lies is worse than no map.
• The app needs Always location permission to work as a family map, which is exactly the case where Always is the right answer.
• Be Closer is free to download, available in 13 languages, and rated 4.4 stars across more than 150,000 ratings on the App Store and Google Play, with over 10 million downloads.

If you want to think harder about what any family app does with the data it collects, including ours, read family location apps and your data. And if you want the whole household to remember what you decided today, one sentence privacy rules for families is the format that actually sticks.