Following weeks of reports from certain Google Maps users that their Timelines had been cleared of all visited places, as first noticed by 9to5Google earlier this month, Google has acknowledged that some users’ data was indeed deleted, with some cases being unrecoverable. According to a statement provided to The Verge, Google spokesperson Genevieve Park stated, “We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people.” Users who had backups enabled will be the only ones able to restore their Timelines, as indicated by the statement.

Google has recently shifted to on-device storage for Timeline data, and it appears that backups are not enabled by default. To activate them, users must navigate to Your Timeline in the Maps app and adjust the settings from the cloud icon. This incident resulted in the loss of years’ worth of location history for some users. While some who had enabled backups before the issue arose were able to restore their Timeline data, others on Reddit reported that they were unable to recover all of their data even after importing their backups.