iPhone users upset over detailed location tracking

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Smartphone users beware. Your device could be tracking your every move. Some iPhone owners are growing more upset after realizing their phones are logging their frequent locations, even labeling home and work addresses.

And those location logs are plotted onto a map on your phone to show where you've been, even how long you stay there.

The devices go just about everywhere we do. And now, many are realizing they're keeping tabs on each of those trips.

"Well that's terrifying," said Julio Ibarra. We met Ibarra, for the first time, outside one of his frequent stops, Starbucks on Shaw Avenue in northeast Fresno. We showed him just what his iPhone says about his other favorite spots around town.

"You were last at River Park on the 23rd," said Action News Reporter Rick Montanez. "Yup and it says Macy's that's where I went, times and everything," Ibarra said.

He says he knew about location services, the phone's GPS-guided feature, but he didn't know about the detailed list of personal information.

"Just having your phone, its telling you exactly how many hours you spend at each different location," Ibarra said. "The most scary part is, it labeled home, the place I've been the most."

So what does apple want to use this trip info for? Well the tech-giant says it's for better mapping and other GPS functions.

"I don't know what apple is doing by that, or why we give it the ability to track us," Ibarra said. "But I know I'm turning my location services off after you've showed me this, because I don't want to be tracked."

Hector Palacios, an iPhone specialist at iDoctors, says it's our fault the settings are turned on and tracking us. "Many times people don't realize what they're getting into," he said. "They're just clicking yes, without reading the fine print. So what happens there is you're giving your authorization to track your location."

The problem, he says, can be solved by going into your privacy settings, then location services, and scroll all the way down to system services, and finally frequent locations and just turn it off.

"It's pretty scary that it's tracked absolutely everywhere I've been," Ibarra said.

If you don't find this on your phone it's probably because you have a model older than the 4S, or an older operating system like the iOS6.

The experts say the best practice is to read all of the prompts on your phone and check on your settings once in a while to make sure you're not revealing too much info.