The 20-Minute Phone Privacy Audit Everyone Should Run Once a Year

Why your phone is leakier than you think

Smartphones ship with settings tuned for convenience and data collection, not for your privacy. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s just how the defaults work: broad permissions get you a smoother first-run experience, and broad data sharing helps the platform and the app makers. Nobody sits you down during setup and asks whether you’d like to turn off ad tracking or stop sharing your location history. You have to go find those switches yourself.

The good news is that a real privacy audit takes about 20 minutes, doesn’t require deleting any apps you actually use, and doesn’t break anything. You’re just closing doors that were left open by default. Below is a walk-through you can do right now on either iOS or Android.

Start with app permissions, not app deletion

The instinct many people have is “I should delete apps I don’t trust.” That’s rarely necessary. The bigger problem is apps you do want to keep, that have been granted far more access than they need to function.

On iPhone (iOS)

• Go to Settings > Privacy & Security. This one screen lists every permission category (Location Services, Contacts, Microphone, Camera, Photos, and more) and every app that has access to each.
• Tap into Location Services first. For each app, you’ll see options like Never, Ask Next Time, While Using the App, or Always. Almost nothing needs “Always.” Weather and maps apps are reasonable exceptions; most social, shopping, and game apps are not.
• Check Photos access next. Many apps default to “All Photos” when they only need access to images you actually share within the app. Switch these to “Selected Photos” where that option exists.
• Review Microphone and Camera. If an app you rarely use for calls or video has access to both, revoke it and re-grant it the one time you need it.

On Android

• Go to Settings > Privacy > Permission Manager. This groups access by permission type (Location, Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Body Sensors, etc.), showing every app with that access.
• For Location, look specifically for apps set to “Allow all the time.” Android will even flag some of these for you under a “reviewed recently” or “unused apps” prompt. Change most to “Allow only while using the app,” or “Ask every time” for anything you open rarely.
• Check the Camera and Microphone lists for apps that have no obvious reason to need them. A flashlight app, a note-taking app, or a game with microphone access is a red flag worth switching off.

This single pass, going category by category instead of app by app, is faster and more thorough than trying to remember which of your 80 apps might be overreaching.

Turn off ad tracking identifiers

Separate from app permissions, both platforms assign your phone an advertising ID that lets apps and ad networks build a profile of you across different apps and, in some cases, across devices. This is on by default.

iOS: App Tracking Transparency

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. Here you can see which apps have asked to track you and turn off “Allow Apps to Request to Track” globally, which stops future requests. You can also review individual app toggles already granted and switch them off one by one.

Android: Ad ID

Go to Settings > Privacy > Ads. Depending on your Android version, you’ll find an option to “Delete advertising ID” or “Opt out of Ads Personalization.” Doing this doesn’t reduce the number of ads you see, it just stops them from being built around a persistent profile of your behavior.

Clear and disable location history

Beyond per-app location permissions, your phone (and your Google or Apple account) may be keeping a longer-term history of everywhere you’ve been.

Google account location history

If you use Google Maps or have a Google account signed into your Android phone, check myactivity.google.com or Settings > Location > Location Services > Google Location History (naming varies by version). You can view, pause, and delete this history. Pausing it doesn’t break Maps navigation, it just stops the long-term logging.

iOS Significant Locations

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations. This is a genuinely under-the-radar feature: iOS keeps a running log of places you frequent to “improve” suggestions and Photos memories. You can turn it off entirely, or review and clear the existing list.

Check what’s showing on your lock screen

This is one people skip because it feels unrelated to “privacy settings,” but it matters just as much. Go to Settings > Notifications (both platforms) and review which apps show message previews, sender names, or content on the lock screen. Anyone who glances at your phone on a desk or in your hand can read those previews without unlocking anything. For messaging apps, banking apps, and email, consider switching preview visibility to “when unlocked” only.

Review app-specific account settings

Some of the biggest privacy exposures live inside individual apps rather than phone-level settings:

• Check your social media apps for “Activity Status” or “Last Seen” toggles and turn them off if you don’t need them.
• Check whether your phone number or exact location is visible in your public profile on any app.
• Review third-party app access connected to your main email or social accounts (in the account’s own security settings, not your phone’s), since some of these connections can be years old and forgotten.

Make this a repeatable habit, not a one-time fix

New apps ask for new permissions, and operating system updates sometimes reset or introduce new settings. The audit above is worth repeating:

• Every time you install a new app that asks for location, camera, microphone, or contacts access
• Roughly twice a year as a scheduled check, the same way you’d check smoke detector batteries
• After any major iOS or Android update, since new features sometimes come with new tracking defaults switched on

The bottom line

You don’t need to abandon convenience or delete apps you rely on to meaningfully reduce what your phone shares. Most of the exposure comes from settings buried a few menus deep that were never meant to be found by accident. Twenty minutes spent walking through permissions, ad tracking, and location history puts you back in control of defaults that were never set with your privacy in mind.

For the complete, structured playbook on this topic, see Smartphone Privacy + Security: iOS, Android, App Permissions, and the Phone Settings Most Adults Have Wrong by Default in our library. New here? Start with our free guide.