Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report
www.cam.ac.uk
Cambridge researchers urge public health bodies like the NHS to provide trustworthy, research-driven alternatives to platforms driven by profit.

Cambridge researchers urge public health bodies like the NHS to provide trustworthy, research-driven alternatives to platforms driven by profit.

Women deserve better than to have their menstrual tracking data treated as consumer data - Prof Gina Neff

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a “gold mine” for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication to sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use.

This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which argues that the financial worth of this data is “vastly underestimated” by users who supply profit-driven companies with highly intimate details in a market lacking in regulation.

The report’s authors caution that cycle tracking app (CTA) data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects, workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and cyberstalking – and limit access to abortion.

They call for better governance of the booming ‘femtech’ industry to protect users when their data is sold at scale, arguing that apps must provide clear consent options rather than all-or-nothing data collection, and urge public health bodies to launch alternatives to commercial CTAs.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    414·
    2 months ago

    For christ sake, is there no open source option for such a simple task?

    Edit:
    2 people here could point to drip within 15 minutes of my post, and a third to the fact there are options on F-droid. So why the fuck don’t women just use that?
    Well i guess the ones with harmful advertising have better graphics or somemeting. Or the fact they allow advertising makes them more visible on google play. And you probably can’t even get drip on iPhones.

    • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
      241·
      2 months ago

      So why the fuck don’t women just use that?

      They probably don’t know about it. If I search “period tracker” on Google Play, Drip is in about 40th place in the results. That’s several screens down, past a bunch of search suggestions, and the parts where it’s open source, on-device, and optionally encrypted aren’t clear until I tap on it and read the description.

      And you probably can’t even get drip on iPhones.

      There’s some irony in a comment dealing with people making decisions that are against their interests because they’re insufficiently informed speculating incorrectly about something like this when it’s easy to check. Drip is, in fact available for iPhone.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        2 months ago

        The fact that I got 3 responses that stated it is available on F-droid made me think that. F-droid does not have anything iPhone, because you can’t side-load on iPhone.

    • Botzo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      Besides drip, Euki (github) is another option on both the play store and iOS.

      Note that both of these options are maintained by tiny teams with limited resources.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        tiny teams with limited resources.

        If the apps work as intended, it doesn’t really matter.

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    I happen to be a penis owner.

    So what would happen if I were to install and use such a monthly tracker app and pretend I’ve been having regular monthlies for a while, then suddenly I miss a couple periods, then suddenly start having periods again?

    Would the cops come beating my door down claiming I had an abortion? 🤔

    Fuck this dystopian mass surveillance shit!

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    2 months ago

    As a trans woman, I make sure to log my irregular bi-weekly periods on flo to make sure their data is tip top!

  • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    Yes of course but it’s marketing data.

    Marketing data. We need it for marketing to people so they can spend money.

    Don’t you understand! Marketing data!!!

  • 13igTyme@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    My wife just asks me to grab her boobs and I can generally let her know several days out and be accurate to within half a day.

  • blitzen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I legitimately have an idea for an app that solves this problem. Its key feature, besides being open source, would be that people without uteruses could use it too, making any data conceivably collected useless.

    I don’t have the skills to make it myself (yet), but if any developer wants to talk I’ll give the idea away. I just want it to be made.

    App would be open source, all data local. Perhaps the option to sync to encrypted iCloud or Android equivalent, but certainly not a cloud-based option you need a new login for. All the features currently in these kinds of apps and that make them useful for menstruating people. Now replace “period” with “hair cut”. Non-menstruating people can now use it, earnestly, for tracking when their last hair cut was, making it useful and the data (if it were to be collected somehow) just noise.

    I even have a name in mind: “hair**.**cuts” (heavy emphasis on the period in the name.) Idea is that anyone with it on their device has plausible deniability that they are using it for period tracking, but the “period” in the name is an implicit wink so we all know what it’s really being used for.