Turn Off Ad Tracking on Your iPhone or Android in 10 Minutes

Delete or block your phone's advertising ID and turn off built-in ad personalisation on iPhone, Android and Samsung.

This guide walks you through the settings that stop apps from following you with your phone's advertising ID, and that turn off the ad personalisation built into iOS, Android and Samsung phones. It takes about 10 minutes and you can undo every change.

Why bother

Every phone has an advertising identifier: a code that apps can read to recognise your device. Advertisers and data brokers use it to link what you do across apps, and often where you go, into one profile. As the EFF points out, a location history alone can reveal where someone lives, works and seeks medical care, even without a name attached. Turning the ID off makes it much harder for most of these companies to connect the dots. It costs you nothing: you still get the same apps and the same number of ads, they are just less targeted.

Before you start

Time: about 10 minutes.
What you need: your phone, unlocked. No account, app or payment needed.
Checked on: 2026-10-04 against Apple, Google and Samsung help pages. iPhone steps apply to iOS and iPadOS 14.5 and later (on iOS 14.5 to 15 the menu is called Privacy instead of Privacy & Security). Android steps apply to phones with Google Play services; deleting the advertising ID works on Android 12 and later. Samsung paths are for One UI 7 and later.
Backup: not needed. These settings delete none of your photos, messages or accounts.

Steps

1 Stop apps asking to track you (iPhone)

Open Settings.
Tap Privacy & Security, then Tracking.
Turn off Allow Apps to Request to Track.
If you previously allowed some apps to track you, iOS asks what to do with them. Choose the option that asks those apps to stop tracking, not the one that lets them continue.

You should see the toggle turn grey. From now on, any app that asks is treated as if you tapped Ask App Not to Track, which means it cannot read your advertising ID (IDFA) and, under Apple's rules, may not track you with other identifiers such as your email address.

2 Check the per-app list (iPhone)

On the same Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking screen, look at the list of apps below the main toggle. Each app that has asked has its own switch. Make sure every switch is off.

You should see either an empty list or a list where every switch is grey.