Be paranoid about privacy

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This week, Google Maps could not find me, and it seemed really pissed off.

I had switched all of the location-access buttons on my iPhone from "While Using the App" to "Ask Next Time", causing my most useful app to launch a series of increasingly desperate pop-up entreaties, begging me to make my life easier by letting it automatically locate me (rather than giving it access to my location only when I type in where I am and where I want to go).

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 28, 2019, with the headline Be paranoid about privacy. Subscribe