Hurrah! Google Maps will no longer dob you into the police

Icons of Google Apps — Google Maps can keep a record of everywhere you’ve been (Picture: Chesnot/Getty)

Google is updating its Map app so only you and your phone know where you’ve been – meaning a record of your movements can no longer be handed over to police.

If you’re surprised (or horrified) that this was even a thing, you won’t be alone.

However, until now the Location History feature on Google Maps basically leaves digital footprints wherever you go – including past the scene of a crime you didn’t know was happening.

That was the case of Florida resident Zachary McCoy, who in 2020 became a suspect in a burglary case because he happened to be riding his bike in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Local law enforcement issued a ‘geofence warrant’ to Google, requesting information on all devices present in the area at the time.

Mr McCoy’s case is far from the only example of wrongful accusation, and while it is primarily an issue in the US rather than the UK, Google’s update is a privacy win for users all over the world.

Millions of people rely on Google Maps for directions (Picture: Getty)

Writing in a blog post, director of product for Google Maps Marlo McGriff said: ‘Your location information is personal. We’re committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control.

‘Remember: Google Maps never sells your data to anyone, including advertisers.’

However, earlier this year a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation found police across the US were ‘increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime’.

On the latest update, Jennifer Lynch, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Bloomberg: ‘It’s well past time. We’ve been calling on Google to make these changes for years, and I think it’s fantastic for Google users.

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‘It means that they can take advantage of features like location history without having to fear that the police will get access to all of that data.’

The update will be rolled out to Android and iOS over the next year, and users will receive a notification on their device when it arrives. Once the app has been updated, Google will no longer have access to users’ location data – even if it is backed up to the cloud.

‘It’s great that Google is doing this, but at the same time, nobody else has been storing and collecting data in the same way as Google,’ added Ms Lynch.

Apple has previously said its own map app does not store such location data. As a result, in the first half of 2022 the company received 13 geofence warrants in the US. In comparison, between 2018 and 2020, Google received 21,000.