San Francisco — Google announced on Friday that the Supreme Court will remove abortion clinic visits from users’ location history as the company’s first effort to address sensitive data after overturning the Roe v. Wade case.
Jen Fitzpatrick, Senior Vice President of Google, wrote: Blog post.. This policy also applies to trips to fertility clinics, domestic violence shelters, addiction treatment facilities and other delicate locations.
Google, which holds a lot of detailed information about billions of users, has been scrutinized since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade strike decision last week and has been scrutinized almost 50 years later for the constitutional right to abortion. Is eliminated. While some reproductive rights advocates are urging people to remove apps that track their menstrual cycle online, experts have used search and location data from companies such as Google as evidence. It states that it is likely to occur.
Roe’s capsize has broadly updated the question about how much data and digital trails people have created. It can be used to monitor or target people who have attempted an abortion. In states that allow abortion bans and other restrictions, law enforcement agencies are expected to focus on taking action against healthcare providers, but personal information such as location and payment data is not available. , Is not difficult to obtain from data brokers and other sources. ..
On Tuesday, the Alphabet Trade Union, a group of more than 800 people working at Google’s parent company Alphabet, released personal data that law enforcement agencies could use to prosecute people undergoing abortion. The search giant requested that it be removed.
In Friday’s announcement, Google deleted some location data, but it didn’t promise to automatically delete search records for abortions that might also be requested. Users must individually choose to delete the search history.
Google has been sued by Texas and accused of keeping track of users even when they are using what appears to be a private secret mode in their Chrome web browser.
Google also makes no promise to change the way government data requests are processed.
“We continue to work to protect our users from inappropriate government demands on data and continue to oppose overly broad or otherwise unfavorable demands,” Fitzpatrick said. Patrick writes.
The company also said that users will be able to delete multiple menstrual logs stored in Google-owned health tracking company Fitbit more quickly than one at a time. The company also encouraged users to adopt Google’s existing configuration options to improve online privacy.
