Protect your digital footprint by erasing your phone tracks

Protect your digital footprint: thoroughly remove traces of your phone

(This article has been updated and was originally published on December 5, 2019)

Every time you pick up your phone to participate in group chat, watch YouTube videos, or search for the Internet, you will leave your digital footprint of your activity. The next time a friend borrows your device, this trace may endanger your privacy. If your phone falls into the hands of an unlawful person, your personal information will also be at risk.

This guide will explain how to prevent your device from recording and storing data that others can easily find. We will focus on cleaning up local storage on your phone, rather than restricting the information that the app sends to the cloud.

Enable invisibility mode

The web browser on your phone (just like the browser on your computer) provides data-limited invisibility or privacy mode. When you open a session in this mode, the application will immediately forget the page you visited and the keywords you searched for after you close the window.

However, private browsing does not make you invisible. For example, if you log into Facebook's web portal in incognito mode, the social network will still record your activity. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will also see your browsing activity and it may also record your online behavior. To hide your browsing activity from your ISP, you need to rely on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) (see this Security Device and Application Overview for more information). However, if you just want to clean up the records left in your phone's local storage, Incognito mode can be very effective in cleaning up your own.

The process of using this mode will depend on your favorite browser application. For example, to start invisibility mode with Chrome, click the menu button (three dots) in the upper right corner of the page and select New Invisibility Window . If you forget to browse in incognito mode, you can still clear saved data. Simply go to the menu again and find the settings . There, under Privacy and Security, you will find an option to clear browsing data. Click on this option and a dialog box will appear with many options to clear the data. Select the option that suits you and click Clear data.

For iPhone users who rely on Safari, click the

to display the page icon (two squares) in the lower right corner of the screen, and select Private. Now, when you click the plus button to open a new window, it will be a stealth window. To clear data collected outside of private mode, open the Settings app, find Safari and click Clear History and Website Data.

Delete message

Unless you use a chat application with self-destruct messages, it keeps a record of your conversation. Of course, most people love to view old communication records, but you don't need to keep every moment of years of conversation. You can delete these old conversations manually, or try a less time-consuming option: automatically delete your chat history after a set period of time has passed.

On iOS, open the Settings app, go to Message>Keep the information, and set the information to automatically disappear after 30 days. In the application itself, you can manually delete the conversation from the home screen: swipe the thread left and click the Delete button.

Unfortunately, not all chat apps offer this automatic clearing feature. To avoid leaving traces of conversation on your phone, you may have to delete it manually. This can be time consuming, but not difficult. For example, in the SMS app "Message" on Android, you can delete the conversation by long pressing and then tapping the Trash Can icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

[Related: 6 Safe WhatsApp Alternatives]

Some applications make it easier to clear all your history at once. For WhatsApp, open the app and go to Settings>Chat>Chat>Chat>Delete all chat history. Then write down the regular check and delete your latest news.

Another solution is to send only the aforementioned self-destruct messages. Applications with this option include Telegram Messenger, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat.

Limit application records

Each app on your phone takes a slightly different approach to recording your activity. Some of these apps allow you to avoid their monitoring by using incognito mode, while others stop tracking you when you make a request.

For example, the YouTube app has an invisible mode that does not track the videos you are watching. To activate this mode in Android or iOS, open the app, click on the avatar in the upper right corner of the screen, and select to enable invisibility mode.

Meanwhile, Google Maps may track where you have been. To stop it, go to Settings: Launch the app, click the menu button (three lines) in the upper left corner of the screen, and then click Settings . In Settings, select Personal Content and find Location History. Once clicked, you will be in your Google account, where you can toggle the switch and turn off the cache feature.

[Related: 5 uses of Google Maps beyond navigation]

There are millions of applications on the market, and there are no hard and fast rules on how to prevent them from recording your behavior. But overall, a good first step is to check the aforementioned settings—Invisibility mode and Stop Tracking.

If you can't find these options, you will have to manually clear your activity. This process will vary according to your operating system.

In Android, open Settings>App, select a title from the list, and click Save. You will see two options: Clear data and Clear cache. Clear both, which will clear all data stored locally by the application. After that, it behaves like you are installing it from scratch, so you need to log in again, set your preferences and more.

On iOS, you won't find the same option, but you can achieve the same effect by uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Open the SettingsApp, click General>iPhone Storage, and select one of your apps. Then select Delete the application to clear all its data. Finally, reinstall the program from the App Store.

It is not practical to do this for all applications every day. However, you may choose to do a manual cleanup regularly (for example, once a month), before you travel, or when you want to start over.

Delete search history

Many mobile apps store data locally and in the cloud so that they can sync your information to other devices. This means that to clear the search log from your phone, you have to clear the records on multiple platforms.

For example, your Google account will store the search history you run from your Android phone. To clear these records, you actually have to access them from the network. Open your browser and go to your Google Activity History page. If the menu is not displayed on the side of the window, click the corresponding button (three lines) in the upper left corner and click Delete activity by time. Set the time range and content type – To delete all content, these should be All times and Search—and then click Delete. This will clear the search history in all Google-related products you use, including Android and Google search engines.

On iOS, you won't find similar activity cleaners. However, you can prevent Spotlight from leaking your past searches by showing them as suggestions. To turn off this feature, go to the Settings app, click Siri and Search , and turn off the search suggestions switch. Now, when you lend your phone to your mother for something, she won't see all the search terms you used to go.

The above is the detailed content of Protect your digital footprint by erasing your phone tracks. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!