News in sight for Google Maps: will tracking by the police be impossible?

Our smartphones now accompany us throughout all the activities we carry out in everyday life. And Maps, Google’s app for maps and navigation, is certainly one of the most popular travel companions.

Google Maps has evolved a lot over the years, with graphic renovations and new features. Among these, for some years now, we have found the function to hold track your movements. This is an option that is disabled by default, but which users can activate through the section Movements.

The Trips feature records the history of all your travels places visited and gods movements made day after day. This is a convenient function for all those who are curious to have an overview of the places visited, and also monthly or annual statistics regarding their movements. In other situations, however, it could turn out to be one tool that can be used against the users themselves.

Let’s talk about cases in which Maps users find themselves, for any reason, under investigation or involved in an investigation by the police forces.

In that case, the authorities can request access to travel history data to see where those users actually were at a specific time. Currently, such data is stored on the Google Cloudand therefore the authorities can request Google access to such data.

This procedure was applied several times in the United States, for example. And then Google announced something new that should make the company happy always a stranger to these dynamics. The novelty for Maps consists in the fact that all the data relating to Movements will be stored locallyand no longer on the cloud.

This will effectively make Google totally unable to provide access to its users’ data to any police or judicial authorities, even if there was a formal request.

The news was announced by Google but it doesn’t appear still in progress distribution. The rollout will be gradual and is expected to take place over the next year. According to the screenshots shared by Google, the deployment should be completed by June 2024.

Maps users who use the Android app and those who use the iPhone app will be affected.