this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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Privacy
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My kids don't even have phones, as they do not need them and they are unhealthy for the young brain's development.
I also don't use location services on my phones. Fuck all that tracking bullshit.
You don't need to use location services to be tracked by cell towers.
That's true but it's not in the same ballpark as GPS tracking. The phone company knows what county I'm in but probably not what businesses and municipal buildings I enter on foot unlike GPS location services. Bluetooth and Wifi are also disabled when I leave the house to minimize those being used for device tracking.
It's just good practice to disable all the unused wireless radios in your pocket computer. Don't turn them on until you need them on. It saves a lot of battery life too.
They have your approximate location. If you are in a densely populated city, they might not know which specific building or which specific apartment unit, but they'll have a small circle around the area, and if you are in a suburb, where things are more spaced out, they will know the exact stores you go to.
If you go to a walmart with huge parking spaces all around it, its obvious you went to a walmart.
It could rather be more accurate in a dense area thanks to more cell towers. And it seems mmWave 5G can get below 1 meter in accuracy.
The phone company can get your location down to a few dozen feet depending on the number of 4G (50 to 70 metres) and 5G (10-50 metres) towers around.
Make sure you turn off your 5g in addition to what OP explained in sister comment
A cheap dumbphone could come in handy at almost any age* (calls, short SMS, especially in emergency situations). Though there is a possibility they wouldn't want to be seen with that. Kids will bully each other for whatever isn't a norm.
Anyway, preferably a simpler one. I used to spend hours each day on Java games. Really, the only thing that stopped me was headaches.
* Almost any - you don't want a 3 year old calling 911 for fun