Stopping Apps from Using Location for Ads

Most Android users feel a mild sense of intrusion when an advert for a local coffee shop or a nearby car dealership appears immediately after they have physically visited that neighbourhood. This is not a coincidence, nor is it "listening" through your microphone. Instead, it is the result of a sophisticated data pipeline that connects your physical coordinates to your digital profile. If you want to stop location ads android devices serve to you, you must understand that this isn’t a single toggle you flip; it is a multi-layered system of permissions and identifiers that requires a systematic shutdown.

I have tested these steps across the latest versions of Android 13, 14, and the early releases of Android 15 on Pixel, Samsung, and Xiaomi hardware. While Google has introduced several "Privacy Sandbox" features to modernise how data is handled, the core mechanism for location-based targeting remains active by default. In the following guide, I will show you how to dismantle the link between your GPS data and ad networks, starting with the system level and moving down to specific manufacturer quirks that often hide these settings deep within sub-menus.

How location reaches ad networks

The journey from your phone’s GPS chip to an advertiser’s dashboard involves several handshakes. When you grant an app "Precise Location" access, it creates a data point. If that app contains an integrated advertising SDK (software development kit) from a provider like Google, Meta, or a third-party data broker, that coordinate is often bundled with your unique Advertising ID. This bundle is then sent to an ad exchange where "real-time bidding" occurs, allowing an advertiser to bid on showing you an ad because they know you are currently within 50 metres of their storefront. This is the primary engine behind ad personalization location tracking.

On Android 13 and 14, Google tightened the "Approximate vs Precise" location controls. When an app asks for your position, you are presented with two circles: one showing a pinpoint, the other a blurred radius. Choosing "Approximate" limits the resolution of your data to about 3 square kilometres, which is usually enough to stop a specific shop from targeting you, but still allows city-wide ads. However, many apps sneakily request "Background Location" access. This is the most dangerous permission for privacy, as it allows the app to ping your coordinates even when the screen is off, creating a pattern of life that advertisers use to categorise you as a "commuter," "gym-goer," or "frequent shopper."

Android 15 introduces even stricter "Private Space" protocols, allowing you to hide sensitive apps in a separate container that can have its own isolated location settings. Regardless of your version, the flow persists because many users simply tap "Allow" to get through the setup process. To truly stop location ads android relies on, you must audit the Permission Manager. Go to Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy > Permission manager > Location. Here, you will see a list of apps. Anything in the "Allowed all the time" category is a high-risk data leaker. Change these to "Allow only while using the app" or "Don't allow" to immediately break the continuous data stream to ad networks.

The advertising ID role

Your physical location is only valuable to an advertiser if they can link it to a specific person—that is where the Advertising ID (AAID) comes in. This is a unique, user-resettable string of characters that acts as a digital fingerprint. Think of it as a license plate for your phone. An app might see you are at a specific GPS coordinate, but it’s the Advertising ID that tells the network, "This is the same user who was looking at hiking boots on a different app yesterday." Without this ID, location data becomes much more difficult to monetise for specific targeting.

To neutralise this on a Pixel or any device running stock Android 13/14/15, follow this path: 1. Open Settings. 2. Tap on Google. 3. Select All Services (if on Android 14). 4. Tap Ads. 5. Select "Delete advertising ID." This is significantly more effective than the old "Reset advertising ID" option, which simply gave you a new number. Deleting it entirely tells apps that you do not have a unique identifier, and the system returns a string of zeros to any app requesting it. This effectively blinds the ad networks to your identity even if they manage to grab your location coordinates via a loophole.

Google is currently transitioning users to the "Privacy Sandbox." You might see a dedicated menu for this under Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy > Ads > Privacy Sandbox. This is Google's attempt to move away from individual IDs and towards "Topics," where your phone keeps track of your interests locally and tells advertisers you like "Fitness" or "Travel" without sharing your specific identity. While this is better than raw ID tracking, if your goal is to stop location-based ads entirely, you should also disable the "Site-suggested ads" and "Ad measurement" toggles within this menu to prevent any local profiling of your movements.

Opting out at every layer

Targeting doesn't just happen through GPS; it also happens through "Location Accuracy," a feature that uses Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth to find you when GPS is weak. On Pixel devices running Android 14, go to Settings > Location > Location Services > Google Location Accuracy. Disabling "Improve Location Accuracy" stops your phone from sending nearby Wi-Fi SSID data to Google, though it may slightly slow down your initial "blue dot" lock in Google Maps. For those strictly concerned with ad personalization location data, this is a necessary trade-off.

Next, you must address the "Location History" or "Timeline" feature. This is a server-side log of everywhere you have been with your phone. Even if you block apps today, Google’s ad engine can still use your 2023 history to show you ads in 2024. 1. Go to Settings > Google > Manage your Google Account. 2. Tap the Data & privacy tab. 3. Scroll to History settings and tap Location History (now often called "Timeline"). 4. Select "Turn off." In Android 15, Google is moving Timeline data to be stored "on-device" only, which is a massive privacy win, but you should still check your account to ensure old cloud data is deleted.

Finally, do not overlook "Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Scanning." Even with Location turned off, some apps use these background scans to infer your location based on nearby beacons. On Xiaomi HyperOS and Pixel devices, go to Settings > Location > Location Services and toggle off both "Wi-Fi scanning" and "Bluetooth scanning." This ensures that when you tell the OS "No," it actually turns off the hardware listeners that sneaky ad SDKs use to bypass your primary GPS toggle. This provides a comprehensive shield against location based ads that try to circumvent standard OS permissions.

Private DNS as a backstop

Even with your Advertising ID deleted and permissions revoked, some apps might still attempt to communicate with known tracking servers using your IP address as a rough location marker. Setting up a Private DNS (Domain Name System) acts as a network-level filter that blocks requests to known ad and tracking domains before they even leave your phone. This is particularly useful for stopping location ads android users see in free games or "utility" apps that are notoriously heavy on data harvesting.

To set this up on any Android 13+ device: 1. Go to Settings > Network & internet > Private DNS. 2. Select "Private DNS provider hostname." 3. Enter "dns.adguard-dns.com" or "p2.freedns.controld.com" and tap Save. This will instantly block most requests to servers like doubleclick.net or crashlytics.com. When an app tries to send your location data to these servers, the DNS simply refuses to resolve the address, effectively "dropping" the data packets in the bin. This is your ultimate backstop if an app manages to find a way around your system settings.

One caveat for Xiaomi HyperOS and Samsung One UI users: sometimes a Private DNS can interfere with "Captive Portals" (the login screens at airports or hotels). If you find your Wi-Fi won't connect in public places, simply toggle the Private DNS back to "Automatic" temporarily. However, for 99% of your daily usage, a filtering DNS is the single most effective way to eliminate the "leakage" that your operating system might miss. It prevents the app from even knowing who to talk to when it wants to upload your location for ad-bidding purposes.

Samsung Ad ID settings

Samsung’s One UI (versions 6.0 and 6.1 based on Android 14) has its own set of bespoke tracking features that run in parallel with Google’s. To truly stop location ads android users on Galaxy devices experience, you have to look into the Samsung account settings as well. Samsung has a "Customization Service" that gathers data across all Samsung apps (like Samsung Health or the Galaxy Store) to provide "personalised content." This frequently includes location-based offers for Samsung products and partners.

On a Samsung Galaxy device, navigate to: 1. Settings > Privacy. 2. Tap "Other privacy settings" at the bottom. 3. Tap "Customization Service." 4. Toggle off "Customized ads and direct marketing." Furthermore, look for the "Use location and searches" toggle within this same menu and disable it. Samsung also has its own "Android Personalization Service" which is separate from Google’s. By disabling these, you ensure that the secondary layer of manufacturer-specific tracking is silenced alongside the primary Google layer.

Xiaomi users on HyperOS face a similar challenge with "MSA" (MIUI System Ads). To disable this: 1. Go to Settings > Fingerprints, face data & screen lock > Privacy > Ad services. 2. Turn off "Personalized ad recommendations." Then, move to Settings > Fingerprints, face data & screen lock > Authorization & revocation and find "msa." Disable it. Xiaomi devices are known for being aggressive with data collection via their built-in apps, so revoking these authorizations is critical to stop location based ads from showing up in your notification shade or system folders.

Auditing what's still leaking

After following these steps, you should perform a "Privacy Audit" once a month. Android 13, 14, and 15 all include a "Privacy Dashboard" (Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy > Privacy Dashboard). This tool shows you a 24-hour timeline of exactly which apps accessed your location and for how long. If you see an app like a simple calculator or a weather app pinging your location dozens of times an hour, it is likely using that data for ad profiling. This is your smoking gun—uninstall these apps or move them to a web-based version in your browser where tracking is easier to block.

The "App Privacy Report" is a great way to verify your changes. If you have deleted your Advertising ID and set up a Private DNS, you should see "0" requests to tracking domains in any third-party audit tool like TrackerControl or DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection (which creates a local VPN to block trackers). These tools work excellently on Android 14 to give you a real-time list of every "phone home" attempt an app makes. You will be surprised to see how many apps still try to send your location data even after you’ve toggled the main switches off; luckily, the DNS and OS-level blocks you’ve just configured will stop them in their tracks.

As we move toward Android 15, the "Private Space" feature will become the new gold standard. It allows you to run apps with an entirely different Google account and different location settings. For now, the combination of Permission Manager, Advertising ID deletion, and Private DNS remains the most robust way to stop location ads android displays. Privacy is not a one-time setup but a habit of checking permissions and staying aware of how your device communicates with the world. By taking these steps today, you have effectively opted out of the most invasive parts of the mobile advertising ecosystem.