Six signals, one dot on a map

Your phone broadcasts your location six different ways.

Stories about people being found at hotels via their online activity feel like magic — they aren’t. Location leaks through layered radio and network signals, each with its own precision and its own audience. Toggle them below to see how the circle around you shrinks.

Drag to rotate · ring size = how precisely you can be placed

GPS / GNSS~5 m · apps with “precise location” permission Wi-Fi positioning~15–40 m · OS location services, nearby-network scans Bluetooth beacons~1–10 m indoors · retail beacons, item trackers Cell towers~100–1,000 m · carrier always has this while phone is on IP address~city level · every website and app server you touch Ad SDKs & data brokersresells the above · linked to an advertising ID

±5 m

Best available precision — street-address level

How each layer actually works

GPS is passive — satellites don’t see you — but any app granted precise location can read the fix and send it anywhere. Wi-Fi positioning works because companies map the physical location of millions of router MAC addresses; your phone only has to see networks, not join them. Cell towers locate you by signal timing across towers; this exists whenever the phone is on and is available to carriers (and, with legal process, to governments). IP geolocation is coarse but automatic: every server you contact learns roughly what city you’re in.

The layer people underestimate is the last one: ad SDKs. Free apps embed advertising code that collects GPS-grade coordinates tied to your device’s advertising ID, and data brokers resell those trails commercially. US investigations (e.g., FTC actions against Kochava and X-Mode in 2023–24) found individual devices trackable to homes, clinics, and hotels from openly purchasable datasets — no hacking, no warrant, just commerce.

Shrinking the circle: what actually helps

Audit app location permissions; switch “precise” to “approximate” (iOS 14+/Android 12+) for anything that isn’t navigation.

Reset or delete your advertising ID (iOS: Ask App Not to Track; Android: Delete advertising ID) — this breaks broker trails more than any VPN.

A VPN hides only the IP layer — useful, but it does nothing about GPS, Wi-Fi, cell, or SDK collection.

Disable background Wi-Fi/Bluetooth scanning in system location settings; it runs even with the radios “off.”

Airplane mode is the only switch that silences the cell-tower layer.

Rule of thumb: each toggle you turned off above is a real setting on your phone. The goal isn’t invisibility — it’s making sure street-address precision goes only to apps you’d trust with your street address.