It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of individuals in the US use period-tracking apps to plan forward, observe when they’re ovulating, and monitor different well being results. The apps may also help sign when a interval is late.
After Politico revealed on May 2 a draft opinion from the Supreme Court indicating that Roe v. Wade, the landmark choice that ensures the constitutional proper to an abortion, would be overturned, folks turned to social media. They have been expressing considerations about the privateness of this info — particularly for individuals who dwell in states with strict limits on abortion — and the way it may be used against them.
Many customers advisable instantly deleting all private data from period-tracking apps.
“If you are using an online period tracker or tracking your cycles through your phone, get off it and delete your data,” activist and legal professional Elizabeth McLaughlin said in a viral tweet. “Now.”
Similarly, Eva Galperin, a cybersecurity knowledgeable, said the data might “be used to prosecute you if you ever choose to have an abortion.”
That received us questioning — are these considerations warranted, and will individuals who use period-tracking apps delete the data or the app utterly from their telephones? We requested the specialists.
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Is your period-tracking app data shared?
Privacy insurance policies — particularly, whether or not the apps promote info to data brokers, use the data for promoting, share it for analysis, or preserve it solely inside the app — fluctuate considerably amongst corporations.
“Does it encrypt? What’s its business model?” mentioned Lucia Savage, chief privateness and regulatory officer for Omada Health, a digital therapeutics firm. “If you can’t find terms of service or a privacy policy, don’t use that app.”
Period-tracking apps are sometimes not coated below the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, although if the firm is billing for well being care providers, it could actually be. Still, HIPAA doesn’t stop the firm from sharing de-identified data. If the app is free — and the firm is monetizing the data — then “you are the product” and HIPAA doesn’t apply, Savage mentioned.
A 2019 examine revealed in the BMJ discovered that 79% of well being apps accessible by means of the Google Play retailer usually shared consumer data and have been “far from transparent.”
When it involves advertising and marketing, a pregnant individual’s data is especially of excessive worth and may be exhausting to cover from the barrage of cookies and bots. Some period-tracking apps, which frequently ask for well being info apart from menstrual cycle particulars, participate in the broader web data economic system, too.
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“The data can be sold to third parties, such as big tech companies; or to insurance companies, where it could then be used to make targeting decisions, such as whether to sell you a life insurance policy, or how much your premium should be,” mentioned Giulia De Togni, a well being and synthetic intelligence researcher at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Flo Health, headquartered in London, settled with the Federal Trade Commission final yr over allegations that the firm, after guarantees of privateness, shared well being data of customers utilizing its fertility-tracking app with exterior data analytics corporations, together with Facebook and Google.
In 2019, Ovia Health drew criticism for sharing data — although de-identified and aggregated — with employers, who might buy the period- and pregnancy-tracking app as a well being profit for his or her employees. People utilizing the employer-sponsored model should at present decide in for this type of data-sharing.
Ovia’s roughly 10,000-word privateness coverage particulars how the firm could share or promote de-identified well being data and makes use of monitoring applied sciences for ads and analytics on its free, direct-to-consumer model.
For European residents, corporations should adjust to the stricter General Data Protection Regulation, which supplies possession of data to the shopper and requires consent earlier than gathering and processing private data. Consumers even have the proper to have their on-line data erased.
Companies have the choice of extending these rights to folks dwelling in the U.S. through their privateness insurance policies and phrases of providers. If they achieve this, the FTC can then maintain the corporations accountable for these commitments, mentioned Deven McGraw, Invitae’s head of data stewardship and the former deputy director for well being info privateness at the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.
The period-tracking app Cycles, which is owned by Swedish firm Perigee, falls into this class. The firm guarantees its customers that it doesn’t do any promoting or promoting of data to 3rd events. Instead, it makes cash solely by means of subscriptions, spokesperson Raneal Engineer mentioned.
Concerned clients have been reaching out to a different well being app, Clue, developed by an organization based mostly in Berlin. “We completely understand this anxiety, and we want to reassure you that your health data, particularly any data you track in Clue about pregnancies, pregnancy loss or abortion, is kept private and safe,” Clue co-CEO Carrie Walter mentioned in an emailed assertion.
Some states, similar to California and Virginia, have state-level legal guidelines that give customers possession over their info and whether or not it’s bought to 3rd events.
Data brokers commerce in different forms of info, similar to location-tracking data for individuals who visited Planned Parenthood, which probably might be bought by regulation enforcement or authorities officers. Earlier this month, SafeGraph halted promoting cellphone-tracking data mapping the actions of individuals visiting Planned Parenthood, how lengthy they stayed, and the place they went afterward, after Vice reported shopping for every week’s value of data for $160.
Also of concern is an organization’s degree of data safety, and the way inclined it’s to a breach. “Hacking is criminal, there’s no question about it,” Savage mentioned. “But once it’s hacked, information can be released.”
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Could this data be used in a prison prosecution?
The brief reply is sure.
“It’s almost surreal that in some states using a period app could get you into trouble,” mentioned McGraw. “But if an abortion is a crime, it could be accessed in building a case against you.”
This is dependent upon the place you reside, however there are not any federal protections against that taking place from a privateness standpoint, she added. Last yr, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which might prohibit data brokers from promoting private info to regulation enforcement or intelligence companies with out courtroom oversight. But the laws has but to make it to a vote.
Wyden informed KHN he was “absolutely” frightened about the likelihood that individuals who search an abortion might be incriminated by their telephone data.
“It is really an ominous prospect of women having their personal data weaponized against them,” mentioned Wyden. “These big data outfits,” he mentioned, “gotta decide — are they going to protect the privacy of women who do business with them? Or are they basically going to sell out to the highest bidder?”
In the absence of a federal regulation, if regulation enforcement does get a court-ordered subpoena, it could actually be tough for a corporation to withstand handing over data associated to a particular case.
“Given the breadth of surveillance laws in the U.S., if a company collects and keeps information, that information is susceptible to being compelled by law enforcement,” mentioned Amie Stepanovich, a privateness lawyer and vice chairman of U.S. coverage at the Future of Privacy Forum. “They don’t necessarily have the ability to legally keep that information from law enforcement once the proper process has been undertaken.”
Still, even in states with strict abortion limits on the books, a lot is dependent upon how these legal guidelines are structured. Last month, for example, a homicide cost against a Texas lady for a “self-induced abortion” was dismissed after the district legal professional discovered it didn’t violate state regulation, which criminalizes suppliers performing abortions, not the sufferers.
If Roe v. Wade is struck down, 14 states have so-called set off legal guidelines that will routinely go into impact and ban abortion outright or after set home windows of time — for example, six weeks or 15 weeks, in keeping with a KFF evaluation.
“It’s really complicated under the hood, but I don’t think people should blindly assume their data is safe from legal process,” Savage mentioned. It can rely upon the firm’s strategy to subpoenas, she added. Some will combat them whereas others is not going to.
Take Apple, for instance, which repeatedly resisted unlocking iPhones for regulation enforcement in high-profile instances like the 2015 San Bernardino taking pictures. Data in Apple’s well being app, which incorporates its interval tracker, is “encrypted and inaccessible by default,” in keeping with the firm’s privateness coverage. All the well being data in the app is stored on an individual’s telephone, not saved on servers. But at the identical time, Savage mentioned, people who find themselves in low-income communities don’t at all times have an iPhone as a result of it’s an costly piece of kit.
Ovia’s privateness coverage says the firm could give data to regulation enforcement if required by regulation or subpoena. The firm, nonetheless, mentioned in an announcement that it has “never provided Ovia user data to any government, nor have we ever received any government requests for access to Ovia user data.” There can be an choice in Ovia’s account settings to delete account data “entirely and permanently.”
Despite safeguards in place below the GDRP, interval trackers based mostly in Europe can nonetheless be subpoenaed as nicely, mentioned Lee Tien, a senior workers legal professional at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“Even (European Union) companies are subject to the U.S. legal process, though it would take longer,” mentioned Tien. “The U.S. has mutual legal treaties with other countries, including E.U. countries, and law enforcement knows how to exchange information.”
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Has this type of info been used by public officers or regulation enforcement earlier than?
Officials holding anti-abortion views have leveraged period-tracking info in the previous. In 2019, former Missouri state well being director Dr. Randall Williams obtained a spreadsheet monitoring the menstrual durations of girls who visited Planned Parenthood in an effort to determine sufferers who had skilled an abortion that didn’t terminate the being pregnant.
During the Trump administration, former refugee resettlement chief and anti-abortion activist Scott Lloyd admitted to conserving observe of the menstrual cycles of stripling migrants in an effort to cease them from getting abortions.
“We are now thinking of period trackers the way we’ve been thinking of facial recognition software for years,” Savage mentioned.
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Should you delete your period-tracking app?
Experts mentioned it’s unlikely {that a} period-tracking app would be the sole piece of proof used if somebody have been constructing a case against you for in search of an abortion.
“Frankly, I think if law enforcement or a civil investigator were trying to figure out who is having an abortion, there are probably several other venues that are more realistic or more immediately useful,” mentioned Stepanovich. “They would likely get a dump of information for the relevant data,” she continued, “such as trying to get the location information of everyone that got dropped off close to an abortion center, which is a much smaller set of data, or getting people who called abortion hotlines at certain times.”
Stepanovich added that so long as somebody is utilizing a smartphone with any sort of app on it there’s a danger that data might be obtained and used as a part of a prison or civil prosecution. Bottom line: The solely strategy to keep away from danger altogether is to not use a smartphone.
But McGraw took a extra cautious strategy: “If I lived in a state where I thought that data might end up in the hands of law enforcement, I wouldn’t track [my period] at all.”
Ultimately, individuals who use period-tracking apps ought to be conscious of the danger of utilizing the know-how whereas contemplating the profit it brings to their life.
“You have to think about what you need in terms of period tracking,” mentioned Tien. “You have to weigh and ask yourself, ‘How much does this convenience really matter to me?’”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is considered one of the three main working applications at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit group offering info on well being points to the nation.