iLounge

The long-awaited Google Maps has finally arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch. Like most of Google’s “free” apps, however, it comes with the price of encouraging you to offer up your location data to Google in exchange for access to the company’s excellent mapping service.  While Google Maps should prompt you on first run as to whether or not you want to participate, if you missed that screen in your rush to get right into the app and explore, you may have a hard time figuring out exactly where the option is afterward.  The good news is that the option is still in the app, however Google seems to have buried it in a pretty obscure location that most users may find challenging to locate. 

To turn off Location Data Collection in the new Google Maps app, first go into the application’s settings by selecting your user profile via the small person icon in the top-right corner of the main screen followed by the gear icon that appears in its place on the user profile screen. From here, you need to go into About, terms & privacy and then one more level down from there into Terms & privacy, where the Location data collection option will appear.