Google will start to delete every thing it is aware of about customers’ beforehand visited places, the corporate has stated, a 12 months after it dedicated to lowering the quantity of non-public information it shops about customers.
The corporate’s “timeline” function – beforehand often called Location Historical past – will nonetheless work for many who select to make use of it, letting them scroll again by means of doubtlessly a long time of journey historical past to test the place they had been at a particular time.
However all the info required to make the function work can be saved regionally, to their very own telephones or tablets, with none of it being saved on the corporate’s servers.
In an electronic mail despatched by the corporate to Maps customers, seen by the Guardian, Google stated they’ve till 1 December to avoid wasting all their previous journeys earlier than it’s deleted for ever.
Customers will nonetheless have the ability to again up their information in the event that they’re frightened about dropping it or wish to sync it throughout units however that may now not occur by default.
The corporate can also be lowering the default period of time that location historical past is saved for. Now, it is going to start to delete previous places after simply three months, down from a earlier default of a 12 months and a half.
In a blogpost asserting the adjustments, Google didn’t cite a particular cause for the updates, past suggesting that customers could wish to delete data from their location historical past if they’re “planning a shock celebration”.
“Your location data is private,” the corporate added. “We’re dedicated to protecting it protected, personal and in your management. Keep in mind: Google Maps by no means sells your information to anybody, together with advertisers.”
However the firm has come beneath growing stress to assist customers protect their location privateness within the face of aggressive legislation enforcement efforts to weaponise its saved data.
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So-called “dragnet” surveillance requests, as an illustration, have compelled Google at hand over details about each consumer in a selected area at a selected time, essentially together with many with no different hyperlink to a criminal offense past a ping from a GPS sign.
The clashes got here to a head after the US supreme court docket’s overturning of Roe v Wade, which assured the precise to abortion for People. The corporate dedicated to deleting details about searches for abortion clinics to guard girls from being criminalised primarily based on their search historical past.
However a Guardian investigation later that 12 months revealed that the corporate’s Location Historical past nonetheless saved sufficient details about a researcher’s actions to uncover precisely which department of Deliberate Parenthood had been visited and when, even marking the situation with a pin – though it wasn’t explicitly saved as a clinic.
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