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Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

People specifically want and are opting into "location history that excludes abortion clinics". Not opting into "location history including abortion clinics". Google is tracking them to abortion clinics anyway. This is a violation of their settings. Whether Google failed as a policy or glitch is irrelevant. If they had said "a bug in the checkbox left location history on for everyone who turns it off" that would be unacceptable.

"Google privacy setting tested and doesn't work" seems like a pretty important headline to me.

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I park on the street in one of the spots in front of Antigua Coffee and Planned Parenthood. Google doesn't know if I am getting a coffee or an abortion, or maybe both. What specifically should Google software do?

This isn't a contrived example. This is one of the examples the author complained about. "One time, it labeled my visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic as the coffee shop next door, and kept the record." Google isn't a mind reader yet.

Huh, where does it say "location history that excludes abortion clinics"? Please show a screenshot from Google settings

Read the article. It’s explicitly communicated by Google spokesperson. When company official makes such statement it must have similar legal consequences as the TOS, because it’s effectively an advertisement of how their service works.

I'm not going to go through the trouble of screenshotting a website. Look at Googles statement[1] among other places. There is no "location history with abortion clinics" option.

[1] Location History section of https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/protecting-pe...

To lay it out more clearly... Google has stated (in that linked document) that places like abortion clinics will be removed from location history

> Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal. Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit. This change will take effect in the coming weeks.

As such, if you don't opt into having that history kept (which it doesn't appear you can), you should be able to expect it will be deleted. That being said, it does seem to pretty clearly indicate that those locations _will_ be tracked; just that said information will be removed later.

"Today, we’re announcing that *IF* our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries"

Everyone citing Google's statement is ignoring that conditional clause.

If they identify the person as going to the Starbucks next door, they won't delete the entry. If they identify the person as going near an abortion clinic but not _to_ the abortion clinic, they won't delete the entry.

> I'm not going to go through the trouble of screenshotting a website

Because it's not there. When users enable this feature it says nothing about this.

This is something Google has been quite explicit and vocal about.

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