In a historic 6-3 decision on June 24, the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. Shortly after the decision was announced, a call for concerned online action quickly surfaced – delete your period tracking apps.
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This is not the first time this sentiment has appeared on the Internet. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court leak warned us of the decision to come, the same message spread to Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and more. Women and people with uteri who depend on these applications to monitor their health were suddenly afraid of how the data collected could be used against them in a hypothetical criminal case about abortion. With this latest Supreme Court decision, and Judge Thomas ’call to the court to further examine the privacy rights cases set by precedents such as Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell, this hypothesis seems much more possible.
Here’s what you need to know about how period tracking apps treat your data and how this could affect your reproductive health care.
SEE ALSO: Your privacy is at risk now that Roe v. Wade has fallen, experts warn
Can applications only transfer your data?
In a typical period tracking app, users enter data such as the day they started and stopped their flow, how heavy it may be, and other bodily symptoms. The app then usually learns the user’s patterns and helps predict when their next period may come, when it may be most fertile, and if a period has been missed and a pregnancy test needs to be done.
With the annulment of Roe v. Wade, data privacy activists and experts are concerned about how this data could be used to show that someone might have had an abortion or was thinking of having one.
While there are no current precedents on how this specific data would be treated in a criminal case, applications have generally cooperated with criminal investigations in the past, usually in cases against child exploitation. Therefore, it matters a lot where each user is and if their status is one of the 26 “safe or probable” to legally ban abortion without Roe v. Wade. Some of these states had activation laws pending the Roe v. Wade, which means abortion was banned immediately in some, and will be banned in as little as 30 days in others.
“Since the focus in many states will be to criminalize people for acts or seek or provide abortion services, it’s key for people in those states to understand that a mobile device is essentially a tracking device,” Jackie said. Singh, a former cybersecurity senior. member of staff for the Biden presidential campaign in Mashable. “While most people tend to leave our Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location services turned on all the time for convenience, and rarely use a VPN or other privacy protection software, people who may have recently been prosecuted as criminals no longer have the luxury of behaving as totally free and lawful citizens. “
What to look for when choosing a period tracking app
If you live in a state where this data is at risk, but you want to continue using your app, it’s important to take a closer look at your specific app’s history with data sharing, your privacy policy, and where you store it. your data.
The popular free period tracking app Flo, which has 43 million active users, was criticized for sharing data last year, reaching an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission on complaints the app did not report to its users about where their data was being shared. In this case, the Wall Street Journal found that Flo reported on Facebook whenever her users indicated they had the period or wanted to get pregnant.
Although Flo did not admit any crime in the agreement and insisted to NPR that it does not share health data with any third party, this investigation and agreement leaves room for doubt about how the application’s privacy practices currently apply. and how that can be. it changes when it is under the pressure of a criminal investigation. In response to Roe’s annulment of Wade, Flo issued a statement saying a new “anonymous mode” will soon be released that removes the personal identity of users ’data. It remains to be seen how this mode will work.
In response, many users of vintage apps are asking others to switch to the free Clue app, a European company that currently has about 12 million users. According to the company’s response to Roe v. Wade, any health data for the period you receive is more secure due to your obligation to apply special protections to reproductive health data in accordance with European data privacy law. Clue promises that its business model is not based on the sale of data to third parties and that any data collected is unidentified and encrypted. It is important to note, however, that Flo is also based in London, where the same laws should have been applied and apparently failed.
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“Because data is so lucrative and data collection and user profile are a key part of most applications’ business models, few applications have a true and demonstrable commitment to privacy, such as a report of transparency that makes representations about the company’s position on data collection. ”Singh said. While his standards are high, Singh pointed to apps like Drip and Euki as potential candidates for apps that “should keep women safe in the blue states” because of their commitment to local data storage and their refusal to allow third party tracking. Singh still suggests using them only in the blue states to get an extra layer of protection against drag network surveillance.
Andrea Ford, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, also recommended through NPR that users pay attention to where their data is stored when choosing an application. If stored locally on your real device, Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, tells NPR that a court would need an order to search your phone, which has “a much higher legal restriction. “to get it. a citation. If it is stored in a cloud and is owned by the company, a citation would suffice.
“Data stored in health applications prior to the SCOTUS decision probably does not pose a major risk,” Singh said. “However, I would warn menstruating people to stop using any type of application to monitor their menstrual health if they have any expectation of having a presence in states that are expected to ban abortion. “However, we obviously cannot anticipate how the future legislation will affect us, so it is safest to stop digital monitoring.”