Google Maps customers have just lately been complaining on locations like Reddit that their Timeline knowledge — the app’s historic file of the place they’ve been — had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it by accident deleted the information and that anybody who wasn’t utilizing Google’s cloud backups is out of luck.
Google spokesperson Genevieve Park supplied this assertion in an e mail to The Verge:
We briefly skilled a technical challenge that prompted the deletion of Timeline knowledge for some individuals. 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 better misplaced knowledge.
In a Reddit publish that Android Authority noticed, customers reported getting the same 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 characteristic. To see if it’s on for you, faucet your consumer icon within the iOS or Android Google Maps app, then “Your timeline,” and search for a cloud icon with both an arrow within it (on) or a line by means of it (off). You may faucet the icon to alter 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 may preserve 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 challenge” reveals. And sadly, whereas Google Maps permits you to export location historical past knowledge to a file, Google’s directions for recovering Timeline knowledge embody no apparent strategy 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.
