With the Locations Services feature in Mountain Lion, your Mac can detect your current physical location. This can come in handy when traveling for instance. By updating your location, your computer’s clock can automatically adjust to your correct time zone. It is also required in order to use the geolocation feature of some applications.

More and more applications are taking advantage of this feature – but not all of them have good intentions. For instance, some applications may send you spam text messages based upon your location. Luckily, OS X prompts you before granting Location Services access to applications and if you do accidentally grant access to a rogue app, you can easily revoke access.

You can review and change your Location Services settings from the Privacy tab of the Security & Privacy pane of the System Preferences application. To revoke an application’s access, uncheck the box next to the application’s name. To completely turn off Location Services, uncheck the box next to Enable Location Services.

Note that if you do turn off Location Services, you will be unable to use the “Find my Mac” feature via iCloud.

To Manage Access to Location Services

1. Click  from the menu.
2. Click System Preferences.
3. Under the Personal area, click Security & Privacy.
4. Click the Privacy tab.
5. Click Location Services in the left pane. All apps that have access to Location Services app are displayed in the right pane.
6. To make changes, click the Lock on the bottom of the page and enter in the administrator password.
7. To revoke access to the Location Services app, click the box next to the application’s name to uncheck it.
8. To completely turn off Location Services, click the box next to Enable Location Services to uncheck it.

Similar Posts:

• Sync Google Contacts with your Mac’s Contacts application
• Turn TextEdit into a Word Processor by Inserting Tables
• Read Web Pages Offline using Safari’s Reading List Feature
• Introducing Daily Mac Tips Courses