In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Google is shielding user location tracking that could cause legal trouble from states that prohibit termination of pregnancy. Overturning Roe v. Wade could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the specter that records about people’s location, texts, searches and emails could be used in prosecutions of abortion procedures or even for medical care requested in a miscarriage. In this photo illustration, a popular location app, the Google Map logo appears on a smartphone. | Getty Images In a blog post on Friday, Google outlined its new policies aimed at protecting users’ privacy when they visit “sensitive” health-related sites, including abortion clinics and domestic violence shelters. Google will automatically clean location information about users who visit abortion clinics. “We are committed to providing strong privacy protections for people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve those protections,” he wrote in the post. DEMOCRATS RAISE $80 MILLION AFTER SUPREME COURT ABORTION RULING In addition to automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also listed counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics and plastic surgery clinics as other destinations that will be deleted from users’ location histories. Users have always had the option to edit their location histories themselves, but Google will proactively do this for them as an added layer of privacy. “Today, we’re announcing that if our systems detect that someone has visited one of these places, we’ll delete those records from Location History immediately after they visit. This change will take effect in the coming weeks.” Fitzpatrick continued. Google logo. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File/AP Newsroom) Google will also update its app store protocols on data privacy, “to give users more information about how apps collect, share and protect their data.” ABORTION FIGHT NOW MOVING TO ALL 50 STATES The commitment comes amid escalating pressure on Big Tech companies to do more to protect the trove of sensitive personal information through their digital services and products from government authorities and other outsiders. Like other tech companies, Google receives thousands of government requests each year for digital user records as part of investigations into misconduct. According to the company’s internal transparency report, it received nearly 150,000 requests for user data from law enforcement in the first half of 2021 and provided information in 78% of cases. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT FOX BUSINESS “We remain committed to protecting our users from inappropriate government data demands and will continue to oppose demands that are overly broad or otherwise legally unacceptable.” the blog post said.
