For many parents and families, Life 360 is a helpful tool. The app allows users to see the precise, real-time location of friends or family members, including the speed at which they are driving and the battery level on their devices. But it's likely you have no idea who else may be tracking this data.

A report in The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom focused on how technology impacts society, recently revealed that the app sells your location data – often within 20 minutes – to a variety of buyers ranging from the United States Department of Defense to private marketing companies.

A disclaimer appears in smaller print at the bottom of the app's permissions screen: “Your location data may be shared with Partners for the purposes of crash detection, research, analytics, attribution and tailored advertising.” Users can disable the sale of their location data in the privacy settings, though that setting is not disclosed in or part of the prompt. But it's likely users blew past this disclosure without fully understanding the implications.

Here is a step by step guide on how to protect your location privacy and stop the selling of this bit of your personal information.