Google Vows to Delete Location Data for Illegal Abortion Searches

(Headline USA) After years of callously infringing on the privacy of its users, Google has decided to automatically purge information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that could trigger legal problems now that the U.S. Supreme Court has returned states’ rights to ban the termination of pregnancies.

The company behind the internet’s dominant internet search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones outlined the new privacy protections in a Friday blog post.

Besides automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also cited counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, and cosmetic surgery clinics as other destinations that will be erased from users’ location histories. Users have always had the option edit their location histories on their own, but Google will automate the process…