Google has issued an alert to Android and iOS users about estimated photo locations, Phonearena (via The Sun) reports.
The feature allows you to estimate and find images’ locations by detecting landmarks and backgrounds. While this might seem like a helpful feature, the company is warning you to change the related setting if you want to have more privacy.
According to Google’s announcement, photos’ location can be obtained in various ways, like locations estimated by Google Photos. The company further explains that they have stopped using Location History to estimate photo locations, but they’ll continue estimating the photos’ location when ‘Estimate missing locations’ is on.
Google wants you to change the estimated photo locations setting in the Photos app
The search giant is now offering two options to users in the Google Photos app. Once you open the app, you can keep the estimated locations or remove them. In case of deciding to remove them, you will receive a notice saying, “Deleting estimated photo locations based on Location History may result in permanent loss of those estimated locations. Your photos will be kept.”
The estimated photo locations might be enabled by default for some users. Follow the Photos settings > Location > Location sources path to check it. Then, see if the toggle for “Estimate missing locations” is on or off. If you don’t want Google to track your photos’ locations, you can turn it off.
To remove the location logs from the previously stored pictures in the Google Photos app, select the photo and tap “Edit” from the three-dot overflow menu. Here, you can add a location to your photo from a list of your recent locations. Likewise, it’s possible to remove the location history from the photo.
Android and iOS users can decide the fate of their estimated locations before May 1, 2023. Google will automatically remove the data from the Photos app after this time passes.
Discussion about this post