In the realm of health and fitness tracking, our minds often gravitate towards smartwatches and dedicated wearables. However, it may come as a surprise that your Android phone is capable of monitoring essential metrics independently, often without your explicit awareness.
Applications like Google Fit and Samsung Health are designed to log various activities such as steps taken, active minutes, calories burned, and more, all while you navigate your daily tasks on your phone. These apps can also share collected data with other health and fitness applications installed on your device.
While this functionality can provide valuable insights into your health and lifestyle, it is crucial to understand what data is being gathered and how it is stored. Fortunately, conducting an audit of these applications is a straightforward process that requires only a few minutes of your time.
How your data is stored
At the core of Google Fit’s functionality lies a technology known as Health Connect, which manages your health data locally on your smartphone, ensuring it remains fully encrypted. This means that unless someone can unlock your device, they cannot access this information. This encryption applies to all applications that utilize the Health Connect standard.
Google Fit does synchronize data to the cloud for backup purposes; however, it is important to note that this data is not end-to-end encrypted. While it benefits from Google’s standard security measures, theoretically, someone at Google could access this data if they chose to do so. This level of trust is similar to that required for many of Google’s services, including Gmail.
For users of Samsung Health, the scenario is quite similar. By default, data is stored locally on your device and encrypted using Samsung’s proprietary Knox technology. Users also have the option to store their data in the cloud for synchronization across devices. However, this cloud data is not end-to-end encrypted either, introducing a potential risk of unauthorized access.
In response to these concerns, Samsung has recently launched an Enhanced Data Protection mode for files saved in Samsung Cloud, including those synced from Samsung Health. This mode ensures that cloud-stored data is fully encrypted and inaccessible to anyone else, although it is currently available only for the Samsung Galaxy S24 series.
Checking health data tracking
To explore the health and fitness data being tracked by your Android device, simply open Google Fit. You will find an overview that typically includes metrics such as steps taken, energy expended, and heart points, which measure your exercise routines.
If you wish to delete any of this data, navigate to the Profile tab, tap the gear icon located in the top right corner, and select Delete your data. You will then have the option to delete data from specific categories or erase everything entirely. For deleting individual entries, such as a specific run, select it from the Journal screen, tap the three dots in the top right corner, and choose Delete.
To halt any tracking performed by Google Fit or to prevent it from communicating with other applications, return to the Profile tab, tap the gear icon, and select Manage data and access. Here, you can adjust App permissions to connect or disconnect third-party health and fitness applications, as well as manage specific data categories.
For instance, to stop Google Fit from tracking your daily steps, navigate to Data and access > Activity > Steps > Fit and toggle off the Steps option. This interface also displays all the data types that Google Fit can log, allowing you to customize your tracking preferences.
For users with a Samsung Galaxy device utilizing Samsung Health, there are slight variations in managing data. You can select a specific data type, such as steps, and pause its recording by tapping the three dots in the top right corner. To erase all personal data, head to the Home tab, tap the three dots, and choose Settings followed by Erase personal data.
From the same Settings page, you can access Health Connect, which functions similarly to its counterpart in Google Fit. This feature allows you to manage which applications, including Samsung Health, have access to the data reported by your phone’s sensors. You can delve into the various categories of logged data and specify which apps and connected devices, like smartwatches, are permitted to report back to Samsung Health.
