Google to remove abortion clinic visits from users' location records
Change results from US Supreme Court's decision to reverse Roe, but makes no mention of Search and YouTube histories
Google stated on Friday that it will erase users' location data when they visit abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, or other such facilities where privacy is especially important.
In a blog post, Jen Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Google, said that the company would make an effort to delete such places from users' location records "soon after they visit" such places.
"Protecting our users' privacy and securing their data is core to Google's work," Fitzpatrick noted.
"Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counselling centres, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centres, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal."
She continued: "If our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit."
According to Fitzpatrick, the change will take effect in the coming weeks.
However, she did not disclose how the firm would detect such visits or whether all data associated with such visits would be removed from its servers.
This change is occurring as a direct result of the US Supreme Court's decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, which deprives women in the United States of their guaranteed constitutional right to access abortion services.
The decision has prompted large demonstrations all throughout the country and led to the banning or severely restricting of the procedure in a dozen different states across the US.
Since the verdict, Google and other tech firms have, for the most part, been mute regarding the manner in which they will respond to demands for data about users in investigations pertaining to abortion.
Privacy experts have expressed concerns that the large volumes of data gathered by Google and other platforms might be used inappropriately by government agencies and anti-abortion groups.
Even before the verdict was made public, lawmakers demanded that Google take precautions to safeguard the personal information of people who use the internet to look for medical assistance.
In May, a group of 42 Democratic members of Congress urged Google CEO Sundar Pichai to cease collecting and storing unnecessary or non-aggregated location data that might be used by "far-right extremists" and prosecutors to identify and target people who've had abortions.
Last month, a group of US politicians urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to examine Apple and Google for collecting and selling customer's personal data without their consent.
In her blog post on Friday, Fitzpatrick reaffirmed the policies that Google already has in place, such as the practice of informing users when their data has been requested by government agencies.
She also highlighted Google's transparency reports that keep track of such requests.
"Google has a long track record of pushing back on overly broad demands from law enforcement, including objecting to some demands entirely," she wrote.
Fitzpatrick's post didn't address the question of how the company would react to any inquiries from law authorities. Instead, the company said it would "continue to oppose demands that are overly broad or otherwise legally objectionable."
In addition, Google said that Fitbit will be updating its app in order to provide users with the ability to erase their menstruation tracking information in bulk from the service.
While the purpose of all these privacy changes is to remove some data from Google's servers that may be used to prosecute individuals for seeking care, the company continues to store a lot of other information about users' activities.
Privacy experts say Search and YouTube histories could still be used as evidence in investigations, but Google's post makes no mention of these potential sources of evidence.