Google to delete the user’s location data when the user visits any place of privacy such as fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, abortion clinics, weight loss centres and domestic violence shelters.Â
The tech giant announced on Friday through its blog post that Google will delete the user’s location data when he enters into an sensitive area. Jen Fitzpatrick, the senior vice president at Google wrote in a blog post that this update will take effect in the coming weeks. The company will soon add a feature for users to delete multiple menstruation logins at once on Google Fit and Fitbit apps or any such other apps.
This is a move made after the US Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in a seismic judgment being seen as a huge blow to women rights. As the US supreme court decided last month to ban abortion rights, activists and politicians have been asking tech giants to limit the amount of information the righ wing could collect and make it unavoidable for them to collect and use it by law enforcement for abortion investigations and prosecutions.
US Supreme court made a groundbreaking decision of scraping women’s constitutional right to abortion and overturned the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling that recognised a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling party handed a victory to Republicans and conservatives who want to limit or ban the abortion procedure.
Google also added that users who use the device’s companion software as their period tracker currently must delete those entries one by one for their safety.
Google said that the location settings will be enabled from Friday. It would continue to push back against improper or overly broad demands for data by the government, without reference to abortion.
The company said the location history of a Google account will be off by default as soon as the user enters any sensitive and private place.
It will be effective in the coming weeks. For those who do use location history or turn on the GPS systems of thier phones, data will be get delete as soon as they enter sensitive places including fertility centers, abortion clinics, addiction treatment facilities and dometic violence shelters will be deleted soon after a visit.
However, Google still did not answer how it would identify such visits or whether all related data would be wiped from its servers. But it ensured to its users that this change will come into effect in the coming weeks. Google said that if it detects a user visited one of these locations, it will delete the location on its own.
Google said, “We commit to deliver effective privacy protections for people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve these protections.”
Google is the first tech company to publicly say how it will handle user data in response to concerns over the court laws and how these datas can be weaponized and imposed by law enforcement.
In another update, Google said on Friday it would allow the US advertisers who lack their own facilities- to provide abortions by conducting virtual medical consultation and distibute pills by mail.
Concerns over smartphone data and reproductive rights arose even before the US Supreme Court was ruling. Eleven US conservative states in the recent months passed laws that give members of the public the right to sue doctors who perform abortions or anyone who helps facilitate them.
Such laws led a group of top Democratic and Liberal lawmakers- who in May had sent a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, asking him to stop collecting smartphone location data as it may become a tool for right extremists to track down and find people seeking reproductive health care.
Facebook has said it will recompense the travel expenses to the extent permitted by law, for employees who will need them to access out-of-state health care and reproductive services.
Microsoft Corporation said it will expand its healthcare payment programme if any of its employees could not access healthcare because it was not available nearby.
