If you’ve spent any time on Facebook, TikTok, or any other social medium in the past few days, there’s a chance you’ve seen people claiming that your iPhone is spying on you — specifically, with a feature called “Suggestions Journaling.”
One post I stumbled across on Facebook sounded pretty scary, warning me that this feature was sharing my FULL NAME and EXACT location with everyone nearby. The post told me to immediately go and turn off the setting because it was “Very scary stuff!!”
However, as is often the case with these things, that’s not exactly true.
The Journaling Suggestions setting was added to iPhones last year as part of the iOS 17 update that introduced Apple’s Journal app. You can find it by opening the Settings app and selecting Privacy and security > Suggestions for journaling. From here you’ll find two switches: Prefer suggestions with others and Others may discover. At the top of the page, there’s also a list of data that Journal Suggestions can pull from, including activity, media, contacts, photos, and notable locations.
Posts on Facebook, TikTok and other social networks claim that these features make your iPhone visible to other people nearby and openly share your name and exact location with strangers. In reality, this does not happen at all.
On Suggestions for journaling page is a hyperlink called “About Logging and Privacy Suggestions”. Tapping this brings up a full page explaining how these features work, including this section:
“Journaling Suggestions uses on-device processing to intelligently group moments and events to provide you with personalized suggestions. Using information stored on your device, Journaling Suggestions can recommend special moments for you to remember and write about. You control which suggestions are shared with journaling applications that use journaling suggestions.
“Logging suggestions use Bluetooth to detect the number of devices and contacts around you without storing which of these specific contacts were nearby. This information is used to improve and prioritize your suggestions. It is stored on the device and not shared with Apple.”
It’s true that Journaling Suggestions uses your contacts and location to run the feature. However, it never shares your name, location or other information with other people.
There’s certainly no harm in disabling Journaling Suggestions, especially if you’re not using Apple’s Journal app or another journaling app that also uses Journaling Suggestions (like Day One). However, it is also not stealing and collecting your personal information as many people online claim.
Stay safe and smart, folks.