Most iPhone owners have hopefully learned to manage app permissions by now, including allowing location access. But there’s another layer of location tracking that operates outside these controls. Your cellular carrier has been collecting your location data all along, and until now, there was nothing you could do about it.
Apple just changed this in iOS 26.3 with a new setting called “limit precise location.”
How Apple’s anti-carrier tracking system works
Cellular networks track your phone’s location based on the cell towers it connects to, in a process known as triangulation. In cities where towers are densely packed, triangulation is precise enough to track you down to a street address.
This tracking is different from app-based location monitoring, because your phone’s privacy settings have historically been powerless to stop it. Toggle Location Services off entirely, and your carrier still knows where you are.
The new setting reduces the precision of location data shared with carriers. Rather than a street address, carriers would see only the neighborhood where a device is located. It doesn’t affect emergency calls, though, which still transmit precise coordinates to first responders. Apps like Apple’s “Find My” service, which locates your devices, or its navigation services, aren’t affected because they work using the phone’s location sharing feature.
Why is Apple doing this? Apple hasn’t said, but the move comes after years of carriers mishandling location data.
Unfortunately, cellular network operators have played fast and free with this data. In April 2024, the FCC fined Sprint and T-Mobile (which have since merged), along with AT&T and Verizon nearly $200 million combined for illegally sharing this location data. They sold access to customers’ location information to third party aggregators, who then sold it on to third parties without customer consent.
This turned into a privacy horror story for customers. One aggregator, LocationSmart, had a free demo on its website that reportedly allowed anyone to pinpoint the location of most mobile phones in North America.
