New Google privacy protections to remove more location information as abortion ban expands

The company behind the internet’s dominant search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones outlined the new privacy protections in a blog post on Friday.

In addition to automatically removing abortion clinic visits, Google also cites counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, and plastic surgery clinics as points. other arrivals will be deleted from the user’s location history. Users always have the option to manually edit their location history, but Google will actively do it for them as an extra level of protection.

“We are committed to providing strong privacy protections for the people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve those protections.” this,” Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president, wrote in the blog post.

The commitment comes amid growing pressure on Google and other Big Tech companies to do more to protect a wide range of sensitive personal information through technical products and services. their numbers from government agencies and other outsiders.

Calls for stricter privacy controls were triggered by a recent decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. That reversal could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the specter that records of people’s location, texts, searches and emails could be used. in prosecutions against the abortion procedure or even to obtain medical care for a miscarriage.

Like other tech companies, Google receives thousands of government requests each year for users’ digital profiles as part of investigations into misconduct. Google says it repels searches and other requests that are too broad or appear baseless.