Google ensures location data sharing with health authorities respects privacy

Google Maps Senior Vice President Jen Fitzpatrick and Google Health Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo have published, in a blogpost,  steps to help public health officials to combat the Coronavirus. Actions include sharing aggregated, anonymised location data via the ‘COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports’. Google has stated that the reports use differential privacy, which adds anonymising artificial noise to datasets, allowing high quality results without identifying specific individuals. The insights feed off data of users who have turned on the Location History setting, which is off by default.