Found out my phone has been tracking my sleep for 3 years without telling me

I was digging through my health app settings last night and discovered this whole sleep analysis feature that's been quietly logging my tosses and turns since 2021... complete with charts showing I average 5 hours 22 minutes of actual rest. The creepy part is I never once turned it on or gave specific permission for it. Has anyone else found hidden features like this in their settings that just run in the background?

3 comments

3 Comments

davidkim22d ago

You never once turned it on or gave specific permission for it" - that part is probably not quite true. I'd dig a little deeper into your phone's setup process. Most of the time when you first set up a phone, it asks about health features during the initial welcome screens and people just tap through without reading. The sleep tracking thing is usually part of a bigger health monitoring system that gets enabled by default unless you manually turn it off. I've seen this happen with friends where they swear they never agreed to it, but then I watch them set up a new phone and they click "agree" on everything without looking. Your mileage may vary of course, but it's worth checking your phone's introductory setup flow if you ever reset it. The data itself is stored locally on your device, so it's not like they're selling it, but it's still annoying that it's not more upfront about what's running.

irisowens21d ago

Bet, those features are buried deep on purpose and companies bank on people not reading.

ben_lewis22d agoMost Upvoted

My buddy's phone started auto-generating his workout playlists for a year before he noticed.