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.

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.

never shared with anyone.

Anti-libre software, Apple Health, bans us from proving this and worse, bans us from fixing it. We do not control it. Others here have already given a solution.

And which phone has a libre radio baseband? Perhaps extremism ad absurdum is not useful advice.

i'd like to point out that it shouldn't be on women (or anyone) to be on constant guard against attacks on their privacy.

yes, it is the state of the world, but the attitude of your comment is victim blaming.

let's not forget that while we on Lemmy may be aware of the danger of mass surveillance tech, we're not the majority.

snowden told us years ago how fucked everything is, and surveillance has only grown since then. let's not forget that it is not normal that corpo data-mining is the norm (along with included de-facto warrantless surveillance). Even though we all should be better, nobody should have to be as careful as we are.

hell, let's be real. As long as we use a smartphone, we're not being careful enough either.

Exacty, Drip features tracking for temperature, cervical mucus, the cervix, sex (solo or partner), desire, pain, and mood, along with spotting and your bleeding levels. It's not just about "when will I have my period?" Additionally I love Drip because of the heads-up notif I get from them 3 days before my predicted period date. Also ut's nice to have a computer calculate when my period will be and shows me if any were a little off or earlier than expected.

Plus since it's encrypted and local, law enforcement would have to crack that to find my period data. I could totally imagine law enforcement coming up with a bullshit warrant and breaking into someone's home, and finding a calendar or notebook marked with their period data and being tried for it.

Yeah, and of course I haven't looked into all of the tech and security of ways to set up these apps. I'm just exhausted myself from it seeming like nothing is ever 100% secure or free from risk, and I'm so cynical about the country I live in and what it will become in the future that I would just rather not trust anything at this point. I'm sure that doesn't 100% hold water/is completely rational, but it's where my head is.

::: spoiler spoiler
safsafsfsafs
:::

Wrong, Apple Health fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software. Does Apple really think we are this easy to scam? It bans us from fixing backdoors.

Oh for fucks sake, I already apologized twice.
But still walking alone into a dark alley at night in a questionable neighborhood is not the smartest thing if you don't want to be assaulted.

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.

Yeah, discoverability is a massive issue on the Play store. If it doesn't bring Daddy Google 30% of whatever they shovel through in ad money or mtx, then you won't see it.

I'm not sure what the best answer to that is. I don't think it's forcing Google to improve its search results.

I want it to be the average person gaining a baseline level of computer and media literacy such that they seek out and find apps that cannot send sensitive data to third parties without the user's clear intent, but I don't think we'll ever get there.

Already trapped in iOS? More anti-libre apps make escape harder.

Getting an app like drip, libre software, is not 'extremism'. lmao

I don't disagree with that, but the point here was freedom from advertisers and general data privacy, not data portability.

But there is an "export all data" feature in health, though.

I didn’t realize those were baseband firmwares. Neat!

Some people never learn.