The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away

It is said that the devil is in the default when it comes to personal technology.

Tech companies have default settings in their devices, apps and websites. Data about our activities and location can be made available by these settings. We can usually opt out of this data collection, but the companies make the menus and buttons hard to see, in the hope that we don't change them.

Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft want us to leave some default settings on because they want us to use their products more easily. Sharing too much data isn't always in our best interests.

It is important to take time to look at the many menus, buttons and switches in tech products. Many of the default settings are always changed by me and other tech writers.

Users can change how they share their app use and location with the settings app on their phone.

• If you want to allow apps to request to track, select Tracking and then turn it off. All apps are told not to give data to third parties.

• If you want to prevent Apple from using information about you to serve targeted ads on its App Store, Apple News and Stocks, you need to select Apple Advertising.

• If you want to prevent the iPhone from sending device data to Apple to improve its products, you need to select Analytics and Improvements.

• To prevent the device from sharing data with Apple for improving Apple Maps, select location services, tap system services, and turn off iPhone Analytics and Routing and Traffic.

The control panel for tweaking data management is on the website my activity.google.com, which is tied to the accounts of the people who use the products.

• You can set auto-delete to remove activity older than 3 months. Instead of creating a permanent record of every search, it's better to purge entries that are more than ninety days old. Recommendations can be made based on recent searches.

• Ryne Hager, an editor of the tech blog "Android Police", suggests that newer versions of the phone's operating system allow people to share an approximate location instead of their precise location with apps. For weather software, sharing approximate data should be the way to go, and precisegeo data should be shared only with software that needs it to work correctly.

The privacy checkup tool can be used to reach the most important settings. These changes prevent employers and marketers from snooping.

• For "Who can see what you share," select "Only me" for people with access to your friends list and pages you follow, and for "Who can see your birthday."

• Choose "Only me" for people who can look you up via email or phone.

• The switches for relationship status, employer, job title and education can be turned off. This will prevent marketers from serving ads based on this information.

Amazon has some control over how it shares information on its website. There are two settings that should be turned off.

• The program that automatically makes newer Amazon products share internet connections is called Amazon Sidewalk. Bad actors may be able to gain access to people's data if Sidewalk opens doors.

  To turn it off, open the app and tap More in the lower right hand side of the screen. Inside the settings, you can choose Amazon Sidewalk and turn it off.

  If you want to use a Ring camera in the Ring app, you need to tap the three-lined icon in the upper left. The button can be slid to the off position if you tap it.

• Some shopping lists, like items saved on a wish list, are shared with the public. Set shopping lists to private by visiting the Your Lists page.

Windows PCs come with a host of data-sharing settings that are turned on by default. To turn those settings off, you need to open the settings menu and click on Privacy and Security.

Privacy may not have anything to do with the default setting on Windows. One of the first things a Wirecutter editor will do when testing a new laptop is to open the sound menu and select No Sounds.