Dogged by years of criticism over its retention of consumers’ data, Google says it will routinely erase users’ information
Google will automatically wipe users’ location history, search results, voice and YouTube activity data after 18 months, as it faces investigations in Europe and the United States over how it handles consumer’s privacy.
The change in policy, announced by Google boss Sundar Pichai on Wednesday, will apply to Google accounts and existing account holders who turn on their location history.
Mr Pichai said Google only wanted to keep people’s histories as long as it would be useful to them.
Those with older accounts can opt to have their information deleted at three or 18 month intervals by manually changing their account settings. Anyone wishing to retain a log of their activity across Google’s services can switch the delete by default option off.
In addition, Google will start automatically deleting YouTube history after 36 months for new accounts.
Google first introduced the option to “auto-delete” information after three or 18 months in May last year, after it was accused of tracking people even if they had location history switched off, but users had to opt in to it.
The Irish Data Protection Commission opened a privacy investigation into the allegations in February, to see whether the company was in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation and the state of Arizona filed a lawsuit over the tracking in May, claiming that it was “nearly impossible to stop Google from tracking your movements without your knowledge or consent”.
Last year Google was forced to admit that human reviewers occasionally listened to users’ voice recordings which were stored after interactions with the Google Assistant.
The company said that it has long had privacy protection tools in place for those who want more control of their privacy, but critics say that these tools are too difficult for people to understand and navigate.
Mr Pichai said that in addition to the automatic deletion, Google will make it easier to use its “privacy checkup” tool and access data controls.
“Soon, when you’re signed into your Google Account, you’ll be able to search for things like “Google Privacy Checkup” and “Is my Google Account secure?” and a box only visible to you will show your privacy and security settings so you can easily review or adjust them,” he said.
Google’s email service, Gmail, storage tool Drive and digital photo album Photos will not delete data by default.