Google will start removing abortion clinic visits from users’ location history

Amid data privacy concerns raised by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Google says it will remove abortion clinics and other facilities from users’ location history. Since the ruling, Google and other tech giants had largely remained silent about how they would handle requests for data about users in abortion-related investigations. Privacy experts have flagged the vast amounts of data collected by Google and other platforms as ripe for abuse by law enforcement and anti-abortion groups.

In a new blog post, Google states that it will attempt to remove locations from users’ location histories “soon after they visit.” The company was vague about exactly how it would identify these locations, or how long the removals would take. The company said the same process would also apply to visits to other types of health facilities. 

“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 …read more