Google Maps temporarily disables live traffic feature for Ukraine

Many features developed by Google aim to make life easier for users in “normal” times. However, when there are situations of instability or war, those same tools can become instruments of harm.

Under that premise, Google temporarily disabled the live traffic feature offered by Google Maps in Ukraine, in order to protect users in the region.

What is the live traffic feature?

This feature of Google Maps allows users to see a preview of traffic in real-time, to notify people if they have to use alternate routes, avoiding wasting time on the road.

The Google Maps tool works with anonymous location data collected from Android smartphones to show where there are traffic delays on the roads and which businesses and stores are busy.

Why did it become a tool that puts Ukrainian citizens at risk?

Military intelligence specialists had warned that geolocation data from Google and other platforms had facilitated the advance of Russian troops into Ukrainian territory.

On Thursday, February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, resulting in a confrontation between troops from both countries and forcing almost 400,000 civilians to flee the country ruled by Volodímir Zelensky.

“I think we were the first people to see the invasion,” open source intelligence expert Professor Jerry Lewis of the Middlebury Institute told Motherboard last week. “And we saw it on a traffic app.”

This would not be the first time that applications have become tools of military strategy. In 2017, fitness tracking app Strava released a 2017 map of user activity accidentally revealing the location of several US military bases, showing where soldiers had been running laps around airfields. Similarly, Snapchat’s geolocation features have been used to collect images and videos from the front lines in the Iraq War, The Verge recalled.

Google said live traffic information was still available to drivers using its turn-by-turn navigation features in that territory.

It is expected that as the conflict unfolds, more measures will be taken in this regard.