Google has announced new updates for its Maps app, including letting users delete their location history.

The move is being hailed as a response to the rising number of 'Geofence' search warrants demanded by officials to identify witnesses and suspects involved in crimes. 

The company said yesterday that for users who have the location history enabled, data will soon be saved directly on their devices instead of on Google servers. This would block Google from being able to see their history. 

While the option to keep your location history is already disabled in factory settings, users with enabled settings can delete information at any time or disable the setting entirely 

Additionally, if a user decides to turn on Location History, the auto-delete control will be set to three months by default instead of 18 months. 

'Your location information is personal,' said Marlo McGriff, director of product for Google Maps, in the blog post. 'We're committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control.' 

Three months ago, Bloomberg Businessweek collected and analyzed 115 warrants for the company's location and search data in five states, including Texas and California, between 2020 and 2023. 

They found police across the US were increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases and people who were completely unrelated to the case.