Privacy continues to be one of the most important aspects for users, especially after the scandals of leaks, data theft and information sales that the technology sector has suffered in recent years. A company like Google, which relies on obtaining and storing user data, is always in the spotlight for how it manages it.
Ahora, Google has made a surprising decision that can help you improve your image and improve the privacy of users of your apps: Google Maps will store the location history directly in the mobile memory, and you will store it on your servers in the cloud.
This change should not affect the functioning of Google Maps, but in the long term it should result in an improvement in the privacy of users’ data, as well as the ability to control it and decide whether they want to delete it or keep them to improve the experience.
More privacy on Google Maps
Until now, the Google Maps application automatically records the places where we are (if we have given it permission to do so), which is necessary for many basic functions; the problem is that This data is stored on Google servers. Every time we open Google Maps on a mobile phone, our car with Android Auto or our watch, the application automatically accesses our account and downloads the location data.
Today, Google announced that Maps would begin store this data directly in the mobile memory, both on Android and iOS mobiles. Therefore, location history will only be saved on our device; although the sites we visit and the routes we take will be automatically synchronized on our devices on which we have Google Maps.
The great danger of this measure, of course, is that if something happens to our mobile phone we could lose all location data; and we wouldn’t be able to use Maps features like Timeline, which creates a record of our trips, tours, and vacations we’ve taken. Therefore, if we enter our Timeline, Google will offer us the possibility of saving the location in the cloud
Therefore, with this update we gain more control over our data. We have the option to continue as before and save them in the Google cloud; or we can keep them on our mobile. In addition to this, Maps will allow us to see all activity data related to the sites we visit, and delete them if we wish; For example, we can see the number of times we have been to a bakery or if we have searched for it on Maps, and delete this data.
Another privacy measure is the automatic deletion of location data, which is done by default after 18 months; but now, This will be done every 3 months in new accounts, although we can change it if we prefer. The last change is an interesting curiosity: if we tap on the blue dot in Google Maps that represents our location, a pop-up window will open and show the location controls, for example if location is enabled on the mobile and the privacy controls. .
All these changes will gradually affect all Google Maps users throughout 2024. Users will receive a notification on their mobile when the storage change to local memory is about to be made, in case they also want to enable cloud storage.
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