Mental health apps have terrible privacy protections, report finds

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to a new analysis, mental health apps have worse privacy protections than most other types of apps. The team found that prayer apps had poor privacy standards.

The vast majority of mental health and prayer apps are not safe.

The team analyzed 32 mental health and prayer apps. The team had concerns about how the app managed user data, so 29 of them were given a warning label. The team said in the statement that the apps collect large amounts of personal data under vague privacy policies. The majority of apps had poor security practices and allowed users to create weak passwords.

Better Help, Youper, Woebot, Better Stop Suicide, Pray.com, and Talkspace are some of the worst apps. The Woebot says it collects information from third parties and shares it with advertisers. Talkspace collects user chat transcripts.

The Mozilla team said in a statement that it reached out to the companies behind the apps multiple times, but only three responded.

Traditional mental health care can be hard for many people to find, and it can be difficult to navigate insurance and costs. The problem got worse when more and more people needed care. Mental health apps made resources more accessible and readily available. The report shows that a privacy tradeoff is possible.

They operate like data-sucking machines with a mental health app veneer.