Your Phone May Be Contributing to Google’s Coronavirus Reports

Location data is a new, somewhat controversial tool in the fight against Covid-19

Damon Beres
Medium Coronavirus Blog
3 min readApr 3, 2020

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Google’s “Location History” feature is being used to create public reports about the coronavirus outbreak. This “Timeline” view shows you locations that you’ve visited. Credit: Google

Google is leveraging its vast location-tracking powers to provide insights into how people are reacting to the coronavirus pandemic around the world.

People who have opted in to using the company’s Location History feature will have their data rolled up into anonymized reports that detail how areas are responding to the outbreak, the company announced in a blog post on Friday. You can see, for example, that as of March 29, traffic to retail and recreation spots has plummeted by 62% in New York state — no doubt in response to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s orders to stay at home and close non-essential businesses. Arkansas, which has no formal shelter in place order for its residents, has seen that same category dip by 29%.

Location History is an interesting part of Google’s arsenal. Users have to enable it themselves along with a Location Reporting setting, after which the company will receive feedback about your activities. I have the feature enabled on my personal account, and I can see a list of restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and shops I went to a few weeks ago, in the Before Times: Google automatically tracks my iPhone, no “checking in” required.

Why opt in? My personal justification is pretty dumb: I like using my history as a kind of automated diary. I can scroll through the “Timeline” and remember happier times, similar to how some people use their Instagram feeds. The feature also promises a number of conveniences. Google uses its aggregate data to fill out the “Popular Times” feature you may have seen in your search queries (“huh, guess the bar gets packed at 8 — let’s stop in for happy hour instead”), and it can notify you if traffic is bad before you start your morning commute, to name a couple notable examples.

Oh, and yeah, Google uses the feature to serve ads and make “recommendations” to users. Google’s location data has also been used as a “dragnet” for law enforcement. A memorable NBC News story from last month detailed how an innocent man was implicated in a burglary for simply riding his bike past the scene of the crime.

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Damon Beres
Medium Coronavirus Blog

Co-Founder and Former Editor in Chief, OneZero at Medium