How much do you use Google Maps Timeline? For me, it's a handy way to see where I was on a given day and revisit some old memories. Well, there's a chance that some of those memories have been obliterated into nothingness, as Google has confirmed that it accidentally erased some Maps Timeline data.

Some people's Google Maps Timeline data got erased for...reasons

As reported by The Verge, Reddit posts began appearing with users complaining that their Google Maps Timeline history had seemingly vanished into nothingness. These were then followed up by reports that Google sent an email detailing that they were the reason people's data had gone missing:

We briefly experienced a technical issue that caused the deletion of Timeline data for some people. We're reaching out as your account may have been impacted.

If you have encrypted backups enabled, you may be able to restore your data. Make sure that you have the latest version of Google Maps, then go to your Timeline. Tap the cloud icon ( ) near the top of your screen, and choose a backup to import your data. If you did not have backups turned on, unfortunately you will not be able to recover lost data.

We understand that this can be frustrating if you use Timeline to remember places that you've visited, and we are taking steps to improve our systems for the future.

Fortunately, if you had Timeline cloud backups enabled, you should be able to re-download the data and get all of your history back. However, if you didn't enable it, all that information seems to have been lost forever. This unfortunate hiccup comes soon after Google shifted the Maps Timeline feature to store data on the user's device instead of on the cloud, which seems good for privacy but bad for instances like the above.

Did you know that Google Maps is now 20 years old? Yeah, I just felt my back ache in horror, too. If you need proof, check out our piece on Google Maps' 20-year history.