Google Maps customers have just lately been complaining on locations like Reddit that their Timeline knowledge — the app’s historic document of the place they’ve been — had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it by chance deleted the information and that anybody who wasn’t utilizing Google’s cloud backups is out of luck.
Google spokesperson Genevieve Park offered this assertion in an e mail to The Verge:
We briefly skilled a technical subject that brought on the deletion of Timeline knowledge for some folks. Almost everybody with encrypted Timeline backups will be capable to restore their knowledge; sadly those that didn’t have backups enabled won’t be able to get well misplaced knowledge.
In a Reddit submit that Android Authority noticed, customers reported getting an analogous assertion in an e mail from Google that included directions for recovering the information for individuals who’d turned on the app’s cloud backup function. To see if it’s on for you, faucet your person icon within the iOS or Android Google Maps app, then “Your timeline,” and search for a cloud icon with both an arrow inside it (on) or a line by it (off). You possibly can faucet the icon to vary your backup settings.
Google warned customers final summer season that it was switching to on-device storage for Google Maps location knowledge. That meant you can maintain observe of your Maps location historical past with out having it tracked on Google’s servers, which is nice for privateness however comes with the chance of it abruptly vanishing, as Google’s “technical subject” reveals. And sadly, whereas Google Maps allows you to export location historical past knowledge to a file, Google’s directions for recovering Timeline knowledge embrace no apparent method to reimport the information that doesn’t contain the cloud backup servers.
Replace March twenty third: Up to date with affirmation from Google spokesperson Genevieve Park.
