Your iPhone knows exactly where you’ve been

“I had no idea my phone did this,” said Monica Meza of Cathedral City.

We met Meza at the Boys and Girls Club of Cathedral City, a place she considers a frequent stop. We then showed her just how many other frequent stops her iPhone kept a record of.

“Wow that’s amazing,” Meza said.

You might not realize this, but your iPhone records exactly where you’ve been and how long you spent there. Those locations are plotted onto a map that can be found by following these steps:

1. Open the iPhone’s settings menu
2. Select “Privacy”
3. Select “Location Services”
4. Scroll all the way down and select “System Services”
5. Select “Frequent Locations”

The software determines where you spend most of the daytime and designates that as your work address. It then does the same with nighttime for your home.

“It takes the place you go to most frequently and labels it as your home,” we told Meza.

“Oh my gosh, that’s scary,” she said.

According to Apple, the data is collected in order to learn places that are important to you and improve traffic routing services. It says it will never share the data with anyone else.

But it still makes Meza uneasy.

“If someone gets a hold of my phone that is not cool at all. I mean, I can lock it but there are a lot of people who can hack it and get my information straight from my phone,” she said.

We showed her how to turn this function off and she plans to keep it that way.

“Now my parents can’t find out where I’m at!”

Note: If you followed the instructions above and can’t find ‘Frequent Locations,’ it’s probably because you have a model older than the 4S or an older operating system like the iOS 6.