Your smartphone is a lot of things, including a super-powered location tracker that puts even an AirTag to shame. That’s why it’s so important to take the management of location data seriously. Google already keeps your account’s Location History off by default, and last year it announced some additional protections for users who do opt in to use it, like automatically forgetting about trips to sensitive medical destinations. Today Google’s revisiting that discussion, offering some new insight into this system and how it operates.
Last July, Google shared that Location History would begin automatically detecting when you visit places that might be considered especially controversial, private, or otherwise sensitive, and clear the record of that trip from the data it saves. While not necessarily an exhaustive list, Google explained at the time that this included “medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others.”
Google’s not adding any new examples to that list today, but it does clarify that this functionality doesn’t extend to all medical destinations — a more general-purpose facility like a hospital or a GP’s office will still show up in Location History.
Going forward, some more tweaks to this system are coming, as Google works to close down loopholes that pose the risk of sensitive location data persisting longer than it should — specifically, users won’t be able manually confirm visits to places on this list. So far, we haven’t heard any timetable for when that restriction might arrive.
Location History is hugely private thing, and while none of this will probably do much to end the debate around just how much info should Google really know about you, we still appreciate these small gestures that signal the company is taking privacy concerns seriously, and striving to find a balance between functionality and harm reduction.
