But all the data required to make the feature work will be saved locally, to their own phones or tablets, with none of it being stored on the company’s servers.
In an email sent by the company to Maps users, seen by the Guardian, Google said they have until 1 December to save all their old journeys before it is deleted for ever.
Users will still be able to back up their data if they’re worried about losing it or want to sync it across devices but that will no longer happen by default.
In a blogpost announcing the changes, Google didn’t cite a specific reason for the updates, beyond suggesting that users may want to delete information from their location history if they are “planning a surprise birthday party”.
But the company has come under increasing pressure to help users preserve their location privacy in the face of aggressive law enforcement efforts to weaponise its stored information.
So-called “dragnet” surveillance requests, for instance, have compelled Google to hand over information about every user in a particular region at a particular time, necessarily including many with no other link to a crime beyond a ping from a GPS signal.
The original article contains 433 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But all the data required to make the feature work will be saved locally, to their own phones or tablets, with none of it being stored on the company’s servers.
In an email sent by the company to Maps users, seen by the Guardian, Google said they have until 1 December to save all their old journeys before it is deleted for ever.
Users will still be able to back up their data if they’re worried about losing it or want to sync it across devices but that will no longer happen by default.
In a blogpost announcing the changes, Google didn’t cite a specific reason for the updates, beyond suggesting that users may want to delete information from their location history if they are “planning a surprise birthday party”.
But the company has come under increasing pressure to help users preserve their location privacy in the face of aggressive law enforcement efforts to weaponise its stored information.
So-called “dragnet” surveillance requests, for instance, have compelled Google to hand over information about every user in a particular region at a particular time, necessarily including many with no other link to a crime beyond a ping from a GPS signal.
The original article contains 433 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!