How to change your app permission

Mobile apps are exceptionally common in this technological age. What can be frustrating with mobile apps, however, is the amount of information that they’ll seek your permission to get.

How many times have you downloaded an app and received notifications from them asking for permission to access your location, your contact information and even other apps. While most apps want to know this information so they can provide you with a better experience, apps can sometimes go overboard in seeking information.

At Circles.Life, we understand that personal privacy and security is important, and hence, we’ve researched the ways on how you can go about changing your app permission.

For iOS

Here’s how you can go about changing app privacy permissions:

If you’re alright with apps having permission to certain areas, but not location services, here’s how you’ll change your app permission:

An incredibly useful feature that’s brand new in iOS 14.5, with app tracking you’ll choose whether or not you allow apps to track you across other apps and services. To do this, you’ll:

1. Launch Settings before tapping on Privacy.

2. Choose Tracking.

3. Those apps that are asking for permission to track will be listed there and you can toggle on and off accordingly.

For Android

For an Android device, it’s fairly similar to iOS, you’ll be able to give permissions to apps to access your photos, messages, conversations and more.

It’s always useful to check an app’s permission before you go ahead and install it so you’ll know what they’re going to ask of you and whether or not you feel comfortable with it.

1. Open Google Play and search for the app that you’d like to download.

2. Tap ‘About this app’

3. Scroll down to the bottom and tap ‘App Permissions’ and you’ll be able to see the permissions that this app will ask for.

Looking to change app permissions? Here’s how you’ll go about managing permissions on a specific app:

Why is it important to control app permissions?

Whether it be an iPhone or Android device, these devices make it easy to share valuable data from your location to your contacts, photos, documents and more. Even though it may be easy to share this valuable data, it’s also easy to protect your privacy and select who views this information.

While there are plenty of apps that do require access to operate properly, they should tell you what they need and why they need it. For example, Instagram will ask for access to your photos and it’ll explain that it needs the access if you’d like to post on the platform. Even if you grant this particular permission, you can also revoke it at any time in Settings.

Even though some apps do require certain permissions, there are also a plethora of apps that ask for more than they need - which can endanger your privacy and safety. Furthermore, if you share your information with an app there’s also a chance that they could share it with others without your permission.

With both iOS and Android devices, however, the good thing is that both companies are doing what they can to adjust its privacy and security rules. With the iPhone for example, with the most recent iOS 14.5, iPhone users are able to monitor their app permissions and settings much more easily.

Monitoring your app permissions

Your phone is a treasure trove of personal information and contains everything from personal data to your contacts, photos and more. The last thing you’d want is for all of this information to leak to the wrong hands.

With that in mind, it’s important that you pay close attention to your permission settings, and be aware of the apps that you’re downloading to your phone. With that, you’ll be able to ensure that your personal information is both safe and secure.