Apple’s New iOS Privacy Feature Limits Carrier Location Tracking (If You Have the Right Phone and Network)

Mobile carriers have long tracked your location with street-level precision; even when you’ve disabled GPS. Now, Apple is taking a step to reduce this surveillance with a new privacy feature in iOS 26.3 called “Limit Precise Location.” But there’s a catch: it only works with specific devices and select carriers.

What is “Limit Precise Location”?

The new feature, arriving in iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3, gives users control over how precisely their mobile carrier can determine their location. According to Apple’s support documentation, when enabled, the setting reduces “the precision of location data available to cellular networks.”

In practical terms, your carrier might only be able to determine which neighborhood you’re in, rather than pinpointing your exact street address. Apple emphasizes that the feature won’t impact signal quality, emergency services, or location sharing through apps like Find My, which specifically targets the location data that flows to your cellular provider.

How Carrier Location Tracking Works

Every time your phone connects to a cell tower, it shares identifying information with the network. Carriers use triangulation to determine your location with remarkable accuracy. In this context, triangulation refers to the process of analyzing which towers your device connects to and signal strength, to determine your location.

This Cell Site Location Information (CSLI) has become a valuable commodity. While carriers claim this data helps optimize networks, it’s also been sold to third-party data brokers and accessed by law enforcement. As one 2021 research study noted, carriers can track “almost every single human being on the planet” in real-time. Even when you turn off GPS and deny location permissions to apps, your phone still communicates with cell towers.

The Privacy Problem: Years of Carrier Data Selling

The new Apple feature arrives against a backdrop of serious privacy violations by major U.S. carriers. In April 2024, the Federal Communications Commission fined AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint a combined $196 million for illegally selling customers’ real-time location data without consent.

The investigation, initiated by Senator Ron Wyden in 2018, uncovered a disturbing ecosystem where carriers sold location data to aggregators, who resold it to data brokers. The data was accessed by bounty hunters, stalkers, and government officials without proper authorization. One investigation revealed that a Missouri sheriff used purchased location data to track judges, while a U.S. marshal tracked former romantic partners.

Despite promises to “wind down” these programs in 2018, carriers continued the practices. Internal documents from CerCareOne, a location data seller, revealed it sold AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint location data to approximately 250 bounty hunters more than 18,000 times over five years.

How the Feature Works

Apple’s solution works by limiting the information your device shares during the initial handshake with cell towers. The C1 and C1X modems (Apple’s first in-house 5G chips) include specific privacy protocols that signal to the network that precise location should not be collected.

When enabled, your device communicates with the tower using a modified authentication process that obscures exact positioning data. The carrier still receives enough information to route calls and data, but the granular location details that enable street-level tracking are withheld.

This is a hardware-level privacy protection, meaning it can’t be defeated by software exploits or circumvented by apps.

What the Feature Protects Against

The “Limit Precise Location” setting protects against:

• Carrier-based surveillance: Prevents your provider from building a detailed map of your movements
• Third-party data sales: Limits what carriers can package and sell to data brokers
• Compelled disclosure: Reduces the precision of historical location data available for bulk collection
• Unauthorized tracking: Protects against location data accessed by bounty hunters or private investigators

What It Doesn’t Protect Against

Important limitations to understand:

• App-based location tracking: Only affects data shared with your carrier; apps with location permissions can still track you
• Emergency services: 911 calls still share precise location data with responders
• Government surveillance: Sophisticated state-level surveillance using IMSI catchers operates independently

Who Should Use This Feature?

Privacy-conscious users concerned about corporate surveillance should enable this feature. It’s a simple way to reduce your digital footprint.

Activists, journalists, and domestic violence survivors will appreciate the additional layer of location privacy, though it’s not a complete solution.

General users have little downside to enabling the feature; your carrier doesn’t need to know your exact location to provide good service.

The Carrier Compatibility Problem

Here’s where things get complicated. The feature only works with:

Devices:

• iPhone Air
• iPhone 16e
• iPad Pro (M5) with cellular

These are the only Apple devices equipped with the C1 or C1X modems that support the privacy protocols.

Carriers (as of launch):

• United States: Boost Mobile
• United Kingdom: EE, BT
• Germany: Telekom
• Thailand: AIS, True

Notably absent from the U.S. list are the “big three” carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

Why Only These Carriers?

The extremely limited carrier support comes down to network architecture. According to technical analysis, the feature requires networks to recognize a specific “flag” in the modem handshake that indicates precise location should not be collected.

The 5G Standalone Advantage

Boost Mobile is the only U.S. carrier on the list because it built an entirely new 5G Standalone (SA) network from scratch. Currently, they are the only major carrier in the U.S. to deploy a nationwide 5G SA network with full cloud-native infrastructure from the ground up.

As of early 2026, Boost Mobile continues to operate and expand its 5G SA network, recently earning recognition as the #1 network in New York City by independent testing firm Umlaut. The carrier’s cloud-native infrastructure, built in partnership with AWS, gives it the technical flexibility to implement privacy features like “Limit Precise Location” through software updates rather than hardware replacements.

Unlike AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, which primarily upgraded existing 4G infrastructure to 5G (deploying mostly Non-Standalone or NSA networks alongside limited SA deployments), Boost’s network was built entirely on modern, software-defined architecture:

1. Cloud-native core: The network uses a cloud-based AWS core that can be updated with software patches
2. Open RAN architecture: Allows for complex, software-defined privacy features through code updates
3. No legacy hardware: Without 20-year-old tower equipment, Boost can implement privacy protocols uniformly

The big three U.S. carriers still operate vast fleets of upgraded LTE towers and hardware-defined network equipment. These legacy systems can’t simply be reprogrammed. They would require expensive hardware replacements at thousands of cell sites.

The international carriers that support the feature (Telekom, EE, BT, AIS, and True) have also invested heavily in modern 5G SA infrastructure. Many European and Asian carriers moved more aggressively toward standalone 5G than their U.S. counterparts.

Can We Expect More Carrier Support?

The question of whether more carriers will adopt support is complex.

Technical feasibility: For the big three U.S. carriers to support “Limit Precise Location,” they would need to upgrade or replace hardware at thousands of cell sites to recognize the privacy protocols in Apple’s modem handshake. While they have 5G SA capabilities, their legacy infrastructure and mixed NSA/SA deployments would require extensive upgrades to support this feature uniformly across their networks; a multi-billion dollar investment taking years.

Economic incentives: Carriers have little financial incentive to support this feature. Location data is valuable. The $196 million in FCC penalties amounts to a rounding error for companies with combined annual revenues exceeding $300 billion.

Regulatory pressure: The most likely path to broader adoption is government regulation requiring carriers to offer location obfuscation options.

Competitive pressure: If Apple expands its in-house modem technology to all iPhones (rumored for the iPhone 18 lineup with the next-generation C2 modem, though timing and full lineup adoption remain uncertain), and privacy-conscious consumers choose carriers based on this feature, market forces could drive adoption.

What This Says About Privacy Priorities

The carrier support list is revealing. Boost Mobile, a smaller carrier, supports the feature. The dominant U.S. carriers do not; many of which have been fined for privacy violations.

This suggests that for major carriers, the value of collecting and monetizing precise location data outweighs potential regulatory fines.

How to Enable the Feature

If you have a compatible device and carrier:

1. Open Settings
2. Tap Mobile Service (or Cellular)
3. Tap Mobile Data Options (or Cellular Data Options)
4. Scroll down to Limit Precise Location
5. Toggle the setting on
6. Restart your device if prompted

Privacy as a Hardware Feature

Apple’s “Limit Precise Location” represents a broader trend: privacy protections moving from software to hardware. Just as the C1 modem was designed for power efficiency and tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem, it now enables privacy features impossible with third-party components.

This hardware-first approach has advantages; it’s difficult to defeat or circumvent. But it also creates a two-tier system where users with newer, expensive devices get better privacy protections. As privacy features increasingly require specific hardware, digital privacy risks becoming a luxury good.

Conclusion: A Step Forward, But Not a Solution

Apple’s “Limit Precise Location” feature represents meaningful progress in mobile privacy. For the first time, users can limit the surveillance capabilities baked into cellular networks themselves.

But the implementation reveals challenges. The feature only works with specific devices and requires carrier cooperation that may never come from major U.S. providers. It addresses one vector of location tracking while leaving many others untouched.

The limited carrier support highlights a fundamental conflict: the same companies that collect our location data are the gatekeepers who must approve privacy protections that limit what they can collect.

Apple’s roadmap for modem expansion could shift this dynamic. The company is developing its next-generation C2 modem for the iPhone 18 Pro models launching fall 2026, with the potential for broader adoption across the iPhone lineup in 2027. However, even widespread deployment of privacy-capable modems won’t help users if carriers refuse to support the feature.

For now, if you have a compatible device and carrier, enable the feature. It’s a simple way to reduce corporate surveillance. But don’t mistake it for a complete solution; true location privacy requires vigilance across all devices, apps, and networks that track your movements.

In an era of pervasive surveillance, every bit of privacy protection matters.

iOS 26.3 is currently in beta testing and is expected to be released to the public in the coming weeks.