They had planned to do that before the ruling by the Supreme Court, but apparently that process is accelerating.īut of course, that still leaves a lot of room for doubt and concern because you don’t know, as you were suggesting, just how much these companies are going to abide by their publicly stated positions. Then there are other companies like Flo that’s creating an anonymous mode so that you can track your period without having to give email or other information. You’re going to have to decide whether you trust a company’s promise. There are a couple of apps, including Clue, which is a European based app that says they abide by the European GDPR privacy regulations and they have promised that they’re not going to sell information, nor are they going to give it away to authorities. And there’s been a lot of variation in how they’ve done that. The period tracker apps – and there are a lot of them out there – have been asked to basically affirm that they’re going to protect people’s privacy. What are you hearing about how the tech industry is trying to deal with these questions that more and more people are asking? So any kind of data that you’re transmitting in a mobile context could potentially, and has been, used to track what people are doing in terms of their reproductive health care. An example I read mentioned a text message where somebody says to her sister, ‘I’m pregnant’ and maybe they’re not intending that to happen. So that kind of information could be useful to government or to anyone who wanted to track the status of somebody who might be seeking an abortion or considering one.īut it’s not just period tracking, right? What other kinds of health tracking data could be used to identify someone seeking an abortion?įertility tracking, for the same reason, because in fertility tracking, you’re probably providing even more detailed information, perhaps, about your sexual activity, the timing of your attempts to get pregnant.Īnd then, generally speaking, health data – so your text messages or your searches for abortion information. Shelly Brisbin: Well, a period tracker gathers information about your cycles, not only when your cycle is supposed to happen, but whether there are irregularities in your cycle that might indicate that a pregnancy had begun, or that a pregnancy has ended and the cycle had changed. Texas Standard: What kinds of risks does using a period tracker actually pose, and how could this data be used to identify someone seeking an abortion? This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity: Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below. Texas Standard producer-reporter Shelly Brisbin says understanding how mobile apps, including period trackers, use and secure data is the key to protecting information about reproductive health. But just how great is that risk, and what, if anything can be done to ensure the privacy of your reproductive health data? Privacy advocates say data about monthly cycles, sexual activity or pregnancy status could potentially be used as evidence that someone was seeking an abortion. Wade – and the return of restrictive state abortion rules, including those in Texas – have led tech and legal experts to warn about the privacy risks associated with period-tracking apps. The Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v.
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