Google has acknowledged that certain users’ data was erased and, in certain situations, cannot be recovered after weeks of some Google Maps users complaining that their Timelines had been cleared of all the locations they had visited, as noticed by 9to5Google this month.
“We had a brief technical issue that resulted in the deletion of Timeline entries for some people,”
Google representative Genevieve Park told The Verge. According to the announcement, users will only be authorized to retrieve their Timelines if they have backups enabled.
Users reported receiving a similar message in an email from Google that gave steps for restoring the data for those who had activated the app’s cloud backup option, according to a Reddit post that Android Authority saw. In the Google Maps app on IOS or Android, press your user icon, select “Your timeline,” and search for a cloud icon that has either a line through it (off) or an arrow inside it (on) to see if it’s on for you. To modify your backup settings, tap the symbol.
The previous summer, Google informed users that it was moving Google Maps location data to on-device storage. As Google’s “technical issue” demonstrates, this meant you could continue to monitor your Maps location history without having it monitored on Google’s servers. This is excellent for privacy, but it also carries the danger of it suddenly disappearing.
Google has been requested by The Register to describe the “technical issue” and the number of users that experience data loss.
We received the same information from a Google representative, but they did not respond to our inquiries.
In 2023, Google reduced the default data retention period for location information from 18 to three months after that, but some users were unaware of the change and protested when their data was deleted. This is not the first time the corporation has botched up consumers’ history data.
Not only does Google promise resiliency, but it also loses customer data. Similar occurrences at Veeam and Cloudflare have been covered by us in recent months.
