Google Is Deleting Visits To Abortion Clinics
Google is doing what it can to protect its user's data, and they are doing this by now implementing an auto-delete location feature for anyone that has visited an abortion clinic.
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The United States went through a harrowing experience recently when the Supreme Court decided to overturn the decision of Roe v. Wade, effectively taking away a woman’s right to an abortion. The decision would now be up to any governing state, and many states jumped on the chance to simply outlaw an abortion, period. However, there are plenty of governing agencies, states, and companies that are fighting back against this decision. One of those companies happens to be Google, which has announced that abortion visits will be auto deleted from histories almost immediately after someone has visited a clinic of any kind.
This is a step in the right direction for protecting rights that women had since 1973, which have now been taken away. People can also turn off location logging data on Google, but the company is also taking steps that would help privacy in these situations in new ways. On top of the auto-deletion of abortion clinic visits, there are now going to be added settings for the Fitbit, which will get rid of menstruation logs. These logs could potentially be used against someone in court, should the said person seeking care be in a state that has now outlawed abortions. The data being collected by Google isn’t the only issue that can be brought up in court, but at least Google is attempting to rectify the situation in some manner.
One of the other major issues is that search history and YouTube search history were not brought up in the privacy statement by Google, and so far, the company has not commented on whether that would be addressed in the future. A woman’s body should be her own business, and it is more than odd that privacy of this kind must even be brought up currently. However, with states now calling the shots, medical histories might be losing a great deal of privacy too. Within the privacy statement, Google has also claimed they would fight back against law enforcement that would demand to see user data that should not be so easily shared. That is how dedicated to privacy Google is claiming to be.
There is no telling what is going to happen in the United States in the coming months with such a controversial decision enacted by the Supreme Court. However, there will be another presidential election in 2024, and the right to an abortion might be one of the biggest campaign promises made by the next candidate for the presidency. This is assuming that the Supreme Court upholds this state-ran decision on a rightful abortion. At least Google is fighting back harder than most other agencies have been.
Google is clearly dedicated to protecting user privacy, and that matters a great deal. Especially because medical history and visits of any kind shouldn’t be revealed to any governing agency, but only be discussed between a patient and their doctor or physician. This is truly an odd time to be living in the United States, and we hope there is change on the horizon to correct this horrendously awful decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
