The Supreme Court voted in June to eliminate the right to abortion. Immediately after the decision was announced, there was a call to remove period tracking apps.
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This sentiment has appeared on the internet before. When the Supreme Court leak warned of the decision to come, the same message spread across a number of social media sites. Women and people with uteruses who rely on these apps to monitor their health were suddenly afraid of how their collected data could be used against them in a criminal case. This latest Supreme Court decision and Judge Thomas's call to the court to further examine precedent-setting right-to-privacy cases like Lawrence and Obergefell seems a lot more likely.
Here is what you need to know about how period tracking apps treat your data and reproductive health care.
Users enter data like what day their flow started and stopped, as well as other bodily symptoms, on a period tracking app. The app learns the user's patterns and helps to predict when their next period may come, when they might be most fertile, and if they have missed a period and should take a pregnant test.
Activists and data privacy experts are concerned about how this data can be used to prove that someone had an abortion or was considering one.
There is no current precedent for how this data would be handled in a criminal case, but apps have cooperated with criminal investigations in the past. It's important where each user is located and if their state is one of the 26 that will legally ban abortions without Wade. Some of the states had laws in place that banned abortion immediately after the decision was made.
The approach in many states will be to criminalize people for the acts or seeking or providing abortion services, so it is important for people in those states to know that a mobile device is essentially a tracking device. People who may be newly prosecuted as criminals no longer have the luxury of behaving as free and lawful citizens because they no longer have access to the internet.
It's important to take a closer look at your app's history with data sharing, its privacy policy, and where it stores your data if you live in a state where this data is at risk.
Flo, a popular free period tracking app with 43 million active users, reached a settlement with the FTC regarding allegations that the app didn't inform users about where their data was being shared. Flo was telling Facebook users when they had their period or wanted to get pregnant.
While Flo did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement, and insisted to NPR that it does not share health data with any third party, this investigation and settlement leaves room for doubt as to how the app's privacy practices are currently enforced. Flo said in a statement that a new "anonymous mode" that removes personal identity from users' data is about to launch. It is not yet known how this mode will work.
Many period app users are calling for others to switch to the free app Clue, which has 12 million users. The company has an obligation to apply special protections to reproductive health data in keeping with European data privacy law. Clue's business model doesn't rely on selling data to third parties, and that any data collected is de-identifying and secure. Flo is based in London where the same laws should have applied.
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"Because data is so lucrative, and data collection and user profiling are a core part of most apps' business models, few apps have any true, provable commitment to privacy, such as a transparency report that makes representations about the company's stance on data collection." While her standards are high, Singh did point to apps like Drip and Euki as possible replacements for apps that should keep women in blue states safe due to their commitment to local data storage and refusal to allow third party tracking. Singh suggests using these only in blue states.
Users should pay attention to where their data is stored when selecting an app according to a University of Edinburgh researcher. Evan Greer, director of the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, told NPR that a court would need a warrant to search your phone if it was stored locally. A subpoena would suffice if it is stored in a cloud.
Singh said that the data in health apps probably doesn't pose much of a risk. If you have any expectation of having a presence in states that are expected to ban abortion, I would caution you to stop using any type of app. We can't predict how legislation will affect us, so the safest thing is to stop tracking.
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