Google will delete every thing it is aware of about customers’ beforehand visited places, the corporate has mentioned, a yr after it dedicated to lowering the quantity of non-public knowledge it shops about customers.
The firm’s “timeline” function – beforehand often known as Location History – will nonetheless work for individuals who select to use it, letting them scroll again by means of probably many years of journey history to verify the place they have been at a selected time.
But all the info required to make the function work can be saved domestically, 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 mentioned they’ve till 1 December to save all their previous journeys earlier than it’s deleted for ever.
Users will nonetheless find a way to again up their knowledge in the event that they’re anxious about shedding it or need to sync it throughout gadgets however that may now not occur by default.
The firm can be lowering the default period of time that location history is saved for. Now, it should start to delete previous places after simply three months, down from a earlier default of a yr and a half.
In a blogpost asserting the modifications, Google didn’t cite a selected purpose for the updates, past suggesting that customers might want to delete info from their location history if they’re “planning a surprise birthday party”.
“Your location information is personal,” the corporate added. “We’re committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control. Remember: Google Maps never sells your data to anyone, including advertisers.”
But the corporate has come beneath growing stress to assist customers protect their location privateness within the face of aggressive legislation enforcement efforts to weaponise its saved info.
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So-called “dragnet” surveillance requests, as an illustration, have compelled Google to hand over details about each consumer in a selected area at a selected time, essentially together with many with no different link to a criminal offense past a ping from a GPS sign.
The clashes got here after the US supreme courtroom’s overturning of Roe v Wade, which had assured the fitting to abortion for Americans. The firm dedicated to deleting details about searches for abortion clinics to defend ladies from being criminalised primarily based on their search history.
But a Guardian investigation later that yr revealed that the corporate’s Location History nonetheless saved sufficient details about a researcher’s actions to uncover precisely which department of Planned Parenthood had been visited and when, even marking the location with a pin – though it wasn’t explicitly saved as a clinic.