Google has updated its Map app in such a way that only an individual user and his or her phone would know the previous locations they have been to and would not provide the coordinates to local police in investigations.
The Google Maps update preventing innocent people from being involved in criminal investigations just because they were at the scene was a privacy win for users all over the world.
Google Maps product director Marlo McGriff assured users that location information was personal data and that they were "committed to keeping it safe, private, and in [the individual user's] control."
Police Using Google Maps to Track Suspects
In previous iterations of Google Maps, the Location History feature on the app basically left digital footprints, including in past crime scenes, of which a person might not be aware.
Metro UK reported that the update was warranted after Florida resident Zachary McCoy became a suspect in a 2020 burglary case as he was riding his bike near the crime scene. This prompted police to issue him a "geofence warrant" to Google, requesting information on all devices present in the area at the time.
Earlier this year, a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation found police across the US were "increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime."
Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jennifer Lynch told Bloomberg that they have been clamoring Google to make such changes for years, and the update was good news for Google users.
The update would be rolled out to Android and iOS over the next year, and users would receive a notification on their device upon arrival. Once updated, Google would no longer have access to users' location data, even if it was backed up to the cloud.
To make devices invisible, users could switch off their location in Google through the account's location history.
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