Google Maps customers have 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 chance deleted the info 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 difficulty 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 will be unable to get better 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 info for many who’d turned on the app’s cloud backup characteristic. 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 means of it (off). You’ll be able to faucet the icon to alter your backup settings.
Google warned customers final summer time that it was switching to on-device storage for Google Maps location knowledge. That meant you possibly can preserve monitor 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 difficulty” exhibits. And sadly, whereas Google Maps enables you to export location historical past knowledge to a file, Google’s directions for recovering Timeline knowledge embrace no apparent strategy to reimport the info that doesn’t contain the cloud backup servers.
Replace March twenty third: Up to date with affirmation from Google spokesperson Genevieve Park.