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.

Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a ‘gold mine’ for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication

University of Cambridge (www.cam.ac.uk)

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.

Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a ‘gold mine’ for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication

University of Cambridge (www.cam.ac.uk)

No woman in the US should be tracking their period in any sort of app or software.

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!

::: spoiler spoiler
safsafsfsafs
:::

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.

Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a ‘gold mine’ for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication

University of Cambridge (www.cam.ac.uk)

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.

Do people need an app for taking notes? Or a calendar?

Sure, I used to do it on paper for many years. But it's much more convenient to track it on my phone, which I have almost always with me. That way I can check whether I'm likely to be bleeding heavily before making plans with my friends to go swimming that day or on a long hike without access to a toilet.

Also many women don't just track the blood flow but also other data like temperature, cervix and cervical mucus. This helps calculate the most fertile days. It's much easier to let an app do that.

::: spoiler spoiler
safsafsfsafs
:::

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.

If you have an iPhone just use the Apple Health app. It works great and the data is encrypted and never shared with anyone.

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? Others here have given a solution.

I tried to talk to my wife about data ownership, opensource, etc. but it's difficult to convey how important it is. She uses Flow. I'm trying to get her to at least try alternatives such as Drip

Well on iOS there’s the Apple health app. To my knowledge it stores health data locally. I’ll double check now.

Edit: it does store health data in iCloud by default, but according to Apple its end to end encrypted

By default, iCloud automatically keeps your Health app data, including health records, up to date across your devices. To disable this feature, open iCloud settings and turn off Health. iCloud protects your health records data by encrypting it both in storage and during transmission. If you're using iOS 12 or later and have turned on two-factor authentication for your Apple Account, health records are encrypted using end-to-end encryption through iCloud. This means only you can access this information, and only on devices where you’re signed in to iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information.

Not wrong. You're arguing a different point than what they said.

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? Others here have given a solution.

What fact did I get wrong? Be specific.

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!

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.