Google has inadvertently deleted some folks’s Maps Timelines

Google Maps’ Timeline characteristic (previously referred to as Location Historical past) is to a couple folks extraordinarily creepy and gross, and to others extremely helpful because it lets you return in time and spot the place you went on any explicit day at any explicit time, equipped in fact that you simply had your Android telephone with you.

Google is getting ready a large overhaul of the way Timeline works, one that must hit all customers inside of the following couple of months (the transition began in December). Timeline will handiest be saved on each and every instrument, should you choose into it, so it’ll not be to be had from Google’s servers. That is a boon for privateness, evidently, however for the duration of the transition Google did a beautiful primary oopsie.

Specifically, it inadvertently deleted some folks’s Timeline information, and it is long past for excellent until they opted into encrypted cloud backups of stated information. Sadly, it sort of feels extremely believable that just a very small minority of customers have performed that, and so for many who have not and do not see their Timeline information anymore, there simply is not any answer – it’ll ceaselessly be misplaced.

In step with a Google spokesperson, this used to be the results of a technical factor and no longer person error or an intentional alternate. That isn’t very comforting to people who’ve misplaced their Timelines ceaselessly, in fact. The excellent news, if we will name it that, is that Google turns out to grasp precisely who used to be suffering from this, and has despatched emails to these folks explaining its error – so if you have not gained an e mail like the only within the screenshot above, you are protected.

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