Your phone is watching

Big Brother Apple is watching you.

Many people may be unaware their iPhone knows exactly where they’ve been, for how long and how often.

Your phone knows all this through its location services feature.

According to Apple, the feature serves an important purpose. It allows location-based apps and websites (including Maps, Camera, Safari and other Apple and third-party apps) to use the information to determine your approximate location.

For example, an app might use your location data and search queries to help you find nearby coffee shops or theatres, or your device may set its time zone automatically based on your current location.

It also allows the iPhone to give you those intuitive and eerie messages on your screen telling you, right around 5 p.m., how long it will take you to get home, based on your history.

Although the information is no secret, many are still shocked to learn the level of knowledge phones hold about their users.

A quick browse through the detailed location list may prove fascinating – and a little scary.

How long were you really at the office? Was your lunch break really only an hour? Was it a liquid lunch? Did you go somewhere you're not proud of? It's all there in your phone.

Check out your own list by opening the Settings icon, clicking Privacy, scrolling down to System Services, scrolling all the way down to the bottom and pressing Frequent Locations. From there, look at the History section.

There, you'll find a list of the places you've frequented during the last month or so.

If you select one of those locations, a map will pop up with locations within that area you've also visited.

You'll also notice that Apple has labelled one location as Home and one location as Work, depending on where you spend most of your time.

Apple insists this information is only stored in-phone and is not accessed elsewhere or shared.

“Your iPhone will keep track of places you have recently been, as well as how often and when you visited them, in order to learn places that are significant to you,” writes the company on its information page.

“This data is kept solely on your device and won't be sent to Apple without your consent. It will be used to provide you with personalized services, such as predictive traffic routing.”

It's important to know that to get this information you must have access to it – and if it irks anyone, it can easily be turned off.

To turn it off, simply stay on the Frequent Locations page, hit Clear History and turn off Frequent Locations by sliding the green slider to the left.