I take my phone with me into the forest when I go to water tomatoes at my secret tomato growing spot. the phone is connected to data all the time. Can TEA (tomato enforcement administration) trace my location using GPS and find the route where I moved? If so, what can I do to prevent it? I would hate to lose my tomatoes.
The short answer is: yes.
If your phone is only connecting to the mobile phone network, the authorities can track its location by guestimating your distance from multiple nearest radio towers, but this method is generally rather inaccurate. We are talking about about 1 kilometer accuracy here. So if someone really wants to find your secret tomato growing spot, they could, with this data alone.
This is just with phone signal alone. There can also be software on your phone that leaks your location GPS data. For example, any kind of mapping app, fitness steps tracker etc can be monitoring your location all the time and can be posting that online even if you don’t know about it.
The only thing you can do to prevent this is to turn off your phone or if you are paranoid about it being possibly still being used to track you, leave the phone home and only bring a burner dumb phone with you (turned off) for emergency use.