Period-tracking apps therefore have essentially free rein in who they share your health data with - as long as they inform you of their privacy policies.įlo explicitly says in its privacy policy that it does not sell any personal data, and it does not collect this data without letting its users know. Most digital health apps, including period-tracking apps, are exempt from the federal health information privacy laws that govern healthcare providers.
This stored information is rarely under your control. Other independent evaluations have had similar findings. One app was found to store answers to the most intimate questions on the company’s server, such as “What type of relationship do you have at present?” Another was noted to have collected approximate location data whenever the user interacted with the app. In 2020, Privacy International (PI), a non-profit advocacy group, asked five period-tracking apps for the data that had been collected on a PI employee who volunteered to use the apps for the project. Most of the best known period-tracking apps collect data on intimate details ranging from users’ menstruation cycles to their sex lives to their medication usage. The mere fact that many of these apps are collecting and storing your data in the cloud or on a server – instead of on your phone – is reason to be concerned. These apps are, simply, empowering.īut there’s also a potential dark side. Our patients will often pull out their period-tracking app to show us that they couldn’t possibly be pregnant, or to remind themselves of the date of their last menstrual period. The “FemTech” industry – a term coined by Ida Tin, the founder of another period-tracking app called Clue – is projected to grow to $60 billion globally by 2027, according to Emergen Research, a market research and strategy consulting company.Īnd no wonder! Our friends tell us that digital health apps, including period-tracking apps, increase knowledge, help them manage premenstrual symptoms and help with fertility tracking. Wade will be struck down by the Supreme Court, privacy experts and lay consumers alike are concerned that this and other digital data gathered by period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute women who seek or have abortions. As we face a likely future in which Roe v.
0 kommentar(er)
