[Eg_cruz]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

No, there is pretty much nothing to completely stop it.

The problem is not the cell phone, the problem is he uses (used?) it to access the internet, and pretty close to everything you can access or do on the internet tracking your usage, and then sells that information to advertisers.

Apple iPhones and the latest iOS are taking steps to reduce the tracking, but even with some tracking suppression, it is not yet perfect and companies like Facebook are suing Apple just for providing the iPhone ower the option to opt-out of being tracked in SOME situations by Facebook. Facebook is saying in court "we have a right" to track our users and do anything we want with any information we get.

I would suggest getting an Apple iPhone and updating to the current OS. It will help, but it will not completely solve it. Just like there is no perfect solution to stop spam calls today.

It appears corporations have more rights than people.

I have the iPhone and have updated. My question is ....is there a place in the setting where I can go and turn the non-following feature. I get asked when I open some apps but not all. Is there a one and done place where I can just do for all apps?
Thank you for your help

[OhioBuckeye]

First find out who’s involved with your phone service, that may tell you something about who’s hacking into your phone!

[Bay Kid]

If you were in dc on the 6th of Jan. your phone is potentially being investigated. Doesn't matter if you were there visiting a friend, dining or shopping. Everything you do on your phone can be tracked by the govern. There is no privacy with a phone.

[airstreamingypsy]

One of the settings on the phono is "Location" if it's turned on the phone knows where you've been. That's how it knows he was in The Villages. He can turn it off, but if he drives his car in a ditch no one can find him. My Android phone is run by Google, Google knows everywhere I go. I don't really care, I use ad blockers, and ignore ads that get through.

[butlerism]

use duckduckgo browser
look up privacy tips.

[J1ceasar]

if you download blumail - it aggregates your various email accounts onto one page. GMail itself has a great spam filter as does bluemail ...

if its texts - hit spam each time.... also try searching for restaurants in your town a few times to reset google search.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally Posted by Eg_cruz

I have the iPhone and have updated. My question is ....is there a place in the setting where I can go and turn the non-following feature. I get asked when I open some apps but not all. Is there a one and done place where I can just do for all apps?
Thank you for your help

Go into settings, scroll down a ways to Privacy.

The top two options,

Location Services - turning it off will stop providing your location to all Apps including photos. If you want to continue to tag "Photos", leave it on, and turn off any apps you don't trust listed below the two options.

Tracking. Selecting this option will deny all "new" apps from tracking, but sadly if you have already approved any, you will have to turn those off individually in the list below the option.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

Well, a couple of points. You are being tracked. PERIOD. I guarantee if you purchase something (almost anything) online you will start seeing ads on websites advertising those items. There are NO settings that will prevent that.

Where you get emails from is more complex, and you can certainly set settings to cut down on letting your email address out, but there are places online that in order to do business (like our vet office, bank, Facebook, Twitter, etc) that require you to give them your email address. Those businesses can/do sell your email address. Many give you the option to not sell or distribute it, but not all.

And even if the site you are doing business with promises to not distribute your email address - sites are hacked daily - every single day, and sometimes very large numbers of accounts are compromised. That results in YOUR email address being circulated on the "dark web" and being sold to people, who then validate that your address is valid and active and in turn then sell it at a premium to advertising companies.

And I see you qualified your statement with "local" businesses. A lot of so-called "local" businesses are not local. And second, companies advertise on the internet. Almost NONE of them do it themselves. They simply provide ad content to an advertising company and pay some amount per "hit". A hit being someone responds, either by clicking an email, or visiting a targeted IP address, or many other ways.

I expect your email service provider is doing some amount of spam blocking for you.

I have 8 different e-mail addresses and use each one for different things. If I need to supply an e-mail address to a company that I know will end up giving me ridiculous spam, I give them a specific e-mail address. They can spam it all they want. Once a month I open the account, hit "select all" and "delete." I never read any of the e-mails on that account, and never use that account to send anyone anything, because that's my spam account. Another one is for professional services only. My doctor, my dentist, my lawyer, the pesticide guy, the e-mail of the guy who works for the company that did our windows. The company that did our windows? THEY get a third e-mail address. That's for "companies that I rarely ever do business with but want to keep their info handy just in case."

Another one is for personal friends and family. And so on and so forth.

I have a spam-blocker, an ad blocker, I run ccleaner and malwarebytes on my desktop every so often, and I have a little .exe file on my hard drive that I keep just in case none of my security measures worked and someone sent me a particularly nasty trojan that sometimes slips through random peoples' computers. That file will meet the trojan and basically smack it upside the head.

I also use FBP, aka "Fluff Busting Purity," an extension for Facebook that prevents ads and lets you filter out (or in) and sort and configure just about anything Facebook can do, and several things it can't do, but you'd want it to do.

The only ads I ever see, are ads I intentionally try to see. They don't appear on my computer at all, otherwise. I get ads on a few apps on my phone (Waze has in-app ads) but they're unobtrusive and easily ignored.

[asianthree]

I am a little surprised a younger person doesn’t know their phone better, to turn off tracking, add app to avoid issues. Really don’t need a IT guy, most grandchildren can fix a phone in minutes