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I'm not exactly sure when it happened. Originally my location history was accurate. About a month ago my location history map looked close to being correct but the mileage was ridiculous!

For example, I drive about 30 miles one way to work. Most of the time lately the mileage shows me driving about 700 miles! It looks like it might be making multiple trips but I can't tell because I can't expand the history map.

I have a Nexus 4 with a straight talk SIM using AT&T.

Any ideas what could cause this strange behaviour -- or even better, how to fix it?

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  • What was same issue another user had and the entry was labeled too vague and closed that referring to?
    – t0mm13b
    Feb 18, 2013 at 18:46
  • @t0mm13b I guess Eric refers to this one: inaccurate location history
    – Izzy
    Feb 18, 2013 at 19:26
  • Has there been any change in the way you use your phone's location services? Obviously disabling use of GPS will throw off location history, but remember that apps like Tasker or Locale can be set to disable and re-enable location services based on context.
    – Mr. Buster
    Feb 18, 2013 at 20:12

2 Answers 2

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Not sure if this really qualifies as an answer, but since I don't have enough points to comment and I do want to contribute what I've discovered about this problem, it'll have to do...

I've had a very similar sounding problem for the last 2 weeks or so with no obvious trigger in terms of app or firmware updates. My location history has gone crazy with some days getting reported travel distances of 10 - 20 thousand miles in spite of me just going to work and back (60 miles each way).

What is happening is that while I am at work, or travelling (or anywhere away from home), location points are being recorded for where I actually am, then for a point very close to my home location, then back where I am again, then back at home, etc. The system seems to be seeing me travelling home and back roughly once per minute, and all those journeys quickly add up!

So far I have tried switching off wifi/cell location services, but that gives you basically no location history and Google Now is largely disabled, so that's no help.

Turning wifi/cell location services back on and then turning wifi off when away from home does help - it gets rid of the 'home and back' in one minute journeys, but the location history is less accurate when away from home. I am using an app called 'Llama' to do this automatically at the moment.

My conclusion from this is that for some reason wifi location reporting is giving a bogus result of 'near home' constantly throughout the day. The only sensible reason I can think of for this would be if I was carrying around another device acting as a wifi access point and that Google location services had learned to location of that wifi point as being at my home. However, I'm not actually carrying around such a device.

Next steps I am considering trying :

  • wipe the data associated with the maps app on the device
  • wipe the data associated with the wifi app on the device
  • do a factory reset on the device and restore

As suggested by GAThrawn below, the most likely cause of this problem is having a second Android device set to report location in addition to your primary device. You take your phone with you, but your tablet sits at home. Both report their location once per minute, or thereabouts, and your location history goes crazy.

The solution in my case was simply to turn off location reporting in the Google maps settings on the secondary device.

I also have a Nexus 4, on T-mobile UK

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  • A partial answer is better than no answer.
    – ale
    Jul 8, 2013 at 12:38
  • How many Android devices do you have using your Google account? I was getting the same thing with location bouncing to and from work at one point, until I realised that Location History was being recorded by my phone (which was with me at work) and also my tablet (which rarely leaves my home). Once I disabled location reporting on the tablet things started looking much more realistic.
    – GAThrawn
    Jul 8, 2013 at 12:45
  • GAThrawn, I think you are absolutely correct - I have a tablet at home that I'd recently installed CyanogenMod on and I had turned on location reporting on it. My experiment with no wifi simply coincided with the battery on the tablet running flat, therefore the phone location was the only one again. I will edit my answer to remove the misleading bits and point to your comment. Thanks!
    – RobinG
    Jul 8, 2013 at 20:38
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I had the same issue. I have a second device at home which was intermittently causing my location to jump back to home multiple times a day.

Disabling reporting on the device seems to have fixed the issue.

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