Google Location History Shows Where You Were in Past

A few days back, I wrote about links to see what Google knows about you. In that article, I mentioned Google Location History. This was something big to write about. So, I decided to dedicate a complete article on Google Location History.

If you use an Android phone and its location data is on, Google keeps on logging your location. It also shares your location with third-party apps that have permission to access your data. You can always turn your location off to stop this tracking.

There are numbers of apps that we use constantly and allow access to our location. These apps are Google Maps, Facebook, Uber, Foursquare and few others. But Google Maps is pretty notable because it is the part of Google that always wants to know more and more about a person to create advertising profile and show relevant ads.

Google Location History

Google has a Location History page where it shows the locations you have been in past. See the sample page of my location history timeline. I live in India. So, you can see the red dots on Indian map that shows places I have been.

You can also see the filters at the top left side to know where you were on a specific date.

If you are on the mobile device, you should open Google Maps, tap on three horizontal lines icon at the left of the search box and tap on “Your Timeline” menu option to have access to your location history.

On Google Maps app, you will see the date picker at the top right side on the Your TimeLine page to see the location history of a specific date.

How to Delete Location History of a specific day?

Now when you know how to check location history of a specific day, you should also know how to delete it. Google has given an option to delete the location history of a selected day. You can do that from both desktop and mobile device.

For this, select the date to see location history of the day. Now, you will see the bin icon to delete the location history.

On the mobile phone, select the date and you will see the location of that specific date. When it is showing the location, tap on the ‘Were you Here’ section and on the next page, it shows the delete icon at the top side.

 

How to turn off Location History

Google also allows you to turn your location history off if you do not want Google to track you. You can do this on both Android and iOS devices. Steps to turn off Location History are below.

Android.

Follow the path Settings -> Google -> Location. Here you see the Google Location History option. Tap on it and turn it off. You can turn it off for your whole account or just for selected devices.

iOS

Open Google App, follow Select Settings > Privacy > Location and then Location History. Here select ‘Do not store’. You can also do the same from Google Maps app. Go to ‘Your Timeline’, tap on three vertical dot icon to open the context menu and select Settings.

Final Words

Google keeps location history for several reasons and it is good that you have the option to edit and delete it. What do you think about this? Do you think Google should stop doing it or are you worried about your location data tracking? Share your views about Google Location History in the comments.