Google will begin eradicating abortion clinic visits from customers’ location historical past | Engadget

Amid knowledge privateness considerations raised by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Google says it’s going to take away abortion clinics and different amenities from customers’ location historical past. Since the ruling, Google and different tech giants had largely about how they’d deal with requests for knowledge about customers in abortion-related investigations. Privacy specialists have flagged the huge quantities of information collected by Google and different platforms as ripe for abuse by legislation enforcement and anti-abortion teams.

In a brand new , Google states that it’s going to try and take away places from customers’ location histories “soon after they visit.” The firm was imprecise about precisely how it could determine these places, or how lengthy the removals would take. The firm stated the identical course of would additionally apply to visits to different sorts of well being amenities. 

“Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal,” Google writes. “Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit.”

The firm additionally stated that Fitbit can be updating its app so customers can bulk-delete their menstrual monitoring data from the service. Other interval monitoring apps have additionally vowed so as to add and safety features in latest days as considerations mount that cycle monitoring apps may develop into a goal for legislation enforcement investigations.

Google additionally addressed considerations about legislation enforcement’s broad requests for location knowledge — a problem lawmakers have the corporate to handle. The firm reiterated current insurance policies, together with its apply of notifying customers when their knowledge has been requested, and pointed to its transparency reviews that monitor such calls for. The firm additionally claimed it has a “long track record of pushing back on overly broad demands” and stated it could “continue to oppose demands that are overly broad or otherwise legally objectionable.”

While the modifications try to handle one set of considerations which have been raised by privateness specialists and activists, they received’t forestall the chance customers’ on-line or offline actions may very well be used towards them in an abortion-related investigation. Google made no point out of whether or not it could take away abortion associated queries from consumer’s search historical past or YouTube accounts, for instance. Browsing historical past and different knowledge can be routinely shared and different advertisers, and knowledge brokers are nonetheless to acquire knowledge about customers’ previous whereabouts.