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Period Tracker Apps Used By Millions Of Women Are Sharing Incredibly Sensitive Data With Facebook (buzzfeednews.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the privacy-woes dept.
Period tracker apps are sending deeply personal information about women's health and sexual practices to Facebook, new research has found. From a report: UK-based advocacy group Privacy International, sharing its findings exclusively with BuzzFeed News, discovered period-tracking apps including MIA Fem and Maya sent women's use of contraception, the timings of their monthly periods, symptoms like swelling and cramps, and more, directly to Facebook. Women use such apps for a range of purposes, from tracking their period cycles to maximizing their chances of conceiving a child. On the Google Play store, Maya, owned by India-based Plackal Tech, has more than 5 million downloads. Period Tracker MIA Fem: Ovulation Calculator, owned by Cyprus-based Mobapp Development Limited, says it has more than 2 million users around the world. They are also available on the App Store. The data sharing with Facebook happens via Facebook's Software Development Kit (SDK), which helps app developers incorporate particular features and collect user data so Facebook can show them targeted ads, among other functions. When a user puts personal information into an app, that information may also be sent by the SDK to Facebook.
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Period Tracker Apps Used By Millions Of Women Are Sharing Incredibly Sensitive Data With Facebook More

Period Tracker Apps Used By Millions Of Women Are Sharing Incredibly Sensitive Data With Facebook

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  • It's so difficult to tell when a woman's having her period.

  • One day (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @05:02PM (#59178844)

    I will establish a company that will offer exactly two apps:

    1) Free online gynecological examination
    2) Premium amateur doctor fetish porn

    I wonder if they will catch me if I offer a spousal discount.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @05:21PM (#59178896) Homepage

    Why do people continue to use Facebook, after everything they've been caught doing that is shady?

    This is absolutely no surprise. Is anyone surprised? Is this anything BUT expected behavior out of the 'apologies make it all ok' company?

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @05:38PM (#59178938)
      They no longer apologize. Till called in question by a regulatory group, it's "pillage and plunder as normal". This is uncaring, mindless, lie to your face greed of people trying to extract their millions at any cost before it all collapses - no different from VC companies buying pharmaceuticals, energy companies manipulating rolling brown outs, the auditors looking the other way because they're hired, or the Trump Administration.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by cbhacking ( 979169 ) <been_out_cruisin ... nospAM.yahoo.com> on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @05:56PM (#59178978) Homepage Journal

        Bear in mind, this is the app invisibly sending the data, not (presumably) the user choosing to share it with Facebook. Facebook presumably uses the data, but they're not the ones taking something a user shared in confidence and passing it along to a third party (at least, not this time).

        These app makers, on the other hand, deserve to be roasted (assuming the claims are true and not misleading). I'm not sure if period and related health data falls under HIPAA (the USA's primary medical privacy regulation), but if it does and these apps are marketed in the USA, the developers could be facing a massive lawsuit. For that matter, even if it doesn't, they could still be at risk of being sued. (IANAL)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )

      but it's not facebook, it's an app

      and I'm on an iphone

      the phone for appers who app, and the app can't tell what you do because apple private

      appologies, I'm clearly no substitute for the appy apps guy

      I think I have some IoT-hate in here too?

      Apps!

    • of most people's worries. Depending on how you run the numbers 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (depends on if you consider $1000 in the bank "Not living paycheck to paycheck"). They're either up to their eyeballs in student debt or terrified they're gonna lose the job they worked their way up in and end up starting from scratch at $8/hr. And that's before we talk about them losing access to healthcare since in America it's tied to your job.

      Privacy abuses are relatively benign compared to t
    • if you live 1,000km+ away from most of your friends, and the *only* thing your friends use to communicate with you is facebook, then you use facebook. It's a gigantic trap, and many of us have fallen into it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        I don't care. They could have chosen googles social media platform.
        People who use facebook get what they deserve. Sadly, It seems I also get what they deserve.

        • I don't get to choose what platform my 280 odd facebook friends use. I can nudge them over and over again to use something else, but at the end of the day, they don't care about ricochet [ricochet.im]. So that makes me stuck with their choice. Sure they could have chosen differently, but they didn't, and now it's the only way to get ahold of them.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A pen and a diary like book per year is something they have not considered?
      So give the data sets to some ad company via a computer network.

    • It's no surprise to me - I basically assume the apps I use are trying to sell me out in some way.
      Two ways I combat it:
      1. Use F-Droid [f-droid.org] to install open source apps when possible, especially for apps dealing with sensitive data.
      2. Use NetGuard [f-droid.org] to block apps access to the Internet.

  • How sensitive can it be? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a man, but I take similar records. Since I do consider this data to be fairly private, I use a paper calendar that only me and my wife have access to. I even use an uncrackable code that you'll never figure out (happy faces and frowny faces). I could also use our local computers, but I don't bother.

    Anyone can very easily do that. Anyone. Anyone from very stupid people and luddites, to clever people and technologists, can do that. Anyone.

    So if people blow right by the two easiest answers and go as far

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re 'It's not sensitive."
      Depends on what a gov is collecting as part of wider electronic health stats per person.
      A gov health social credit system? For insurance, ads and big gov use?

  • Sept 9th, BuzzFeed: OMG Period trackers share your data with facebook!
    Sept 10th, Apple: We now have a period tracker built into iOS

    Is that timing just a coincidence?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 )

      But it has to do with vaginas!

      I feel like describing this as "incredibly sensitive" is a little over the top. If I created a tracker for my urination and bowel movements no one would consider that 'incredibly sensitive", mostly "I didn't want to know that". I'm not exactly sure why data tracking periods is any different. There's medical value in retaining those records, but after about high school, very little other value.

      • Well if I'm an employer (Score:4, Informative)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @07:26PM (#59179224)
        looking to find out if you're trying to get pregnant (and therefore about to cost me a bunch of money in paid leave and increased insurance costs) then yeah, it's incredibly sensitive.

        And yes, small employers watch when their employees use the insurance. Buddy of mine with a sick family basically got told real polite-like that if he ever signed up for the company insurance he'd be fired the next day. This was pre Obamacare and all, but those laws are sparsely enforced.

      • There are reasons for tracking urination and bowel movements, and they're all private!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        "If I created a tracker for my urination and bowel movements no one would consider that 'incredibly sensitive",

        I would, because it is.
        Insurance companies would love it because it gets them more data to sift through to find an excuse not to pay out.
        I don't think you realize how much information would would literally be giving up.
        Now consider it's not the only series of data that have about you?
        Remember:' No data' is also data, change in pattern is data, not just the series of numbers.

        On the most benign level

    • Sept 9th, BuzzFeed: OMG Period trackers share your data with facebook!
      Sept 10th, Apple: We now have a period tracker built into iOS

      Is that timing just a coincidence?

      Sept 11th, 9/11: The app synchronizes all the women and sends them to the middle east to wipe out Daesh.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        OH I get it, a period joke based on stereo type! HA>HA>HA> lol...

        Yeah., make fun of a medical condition. Totally not done to death.

        Next up, jokes about blondes and woman drivers!

  • A little disgusted (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spinlock_1977 ( 777598 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {7791_kcolnipS}> on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @06:09PM (#59179012) Journal

    The mysoginy in some of these comments demonstrates how much entitled males have to grow to become members of a civil society that respects all members equally. Shame on a whole bunch of you snickering children. This is a privacy issue, not a vaginal one.

    • Pffft, they can just look at the moon to know when it's coming.

    • speaking of vaginal issues...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • The mysoginy

      You keep using that word. Let's define it shall we?

      misogyny [cambridge.org]

      Now that we know what it is do any of these comments meet the standard? I don't think so. I don't see any hatred and I don't see any superiority either.

      But females and nu-males / soy-males love to paint women as victims. The reality is that women are the ones with the power these days. All the advantages of an easy life and trivial mate-finding without any of the drawbacks there used to be from being female.

      Maybe if they had to live even one day as

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        From your link:

        "But to stop with the misogyny built into the idea of women as weaker and less rational than men distorts a still larger historical picture."

        The idea women should be insulted and jokes about a medical issue is misogyny.

        " I don't think so."

        Yeah, but you are clearly an apologist for assholes. Because it full of them that meet that standard.

        " The reality is that women are the ones with the power these days."

        Oh, I see. You are an idiot.

        Well, I don't dance with pig, so good by you useless piece of

      • Mate finding is a huge problem for women. You are making up stuff you know nothing about.

        • Mate finding is much easier for women than for men. Well unless they are lesbians. Men are no challenge. Attractive females will default reject most of the population. Attractive males are easier.

          Females are much more highly valued than males. I have never met the female equiv of an incel virgin-for-life, but there are lots of men like that. You just have to be below average or short or shy.

          Also if you are female the world cares about you and what happens to you. If you are male no one could possibly care l

  • This is just one more instance of the abhorrent loss of privacy that is being visited on us by the makers and sellers of cell phones. They have us all in a proprietary pen where they have ultimate control over everything, and we are their prisoners. When will the Linux of cell phones appear? We need open source phones with open source applications. This will not fix all the privacy problems that come with cell phones, but it certainly will eliminate the sort of egregious snooping demonstrated by this ap

  • Article is pure clickbait. Roughly half the world menstruates. Anonymized data tracking such is useless to anyone else and utterly boring.

    If it were a shit or piss tracker without mentioning gender would anyone care? The childish fascination with sex is product of a repressive and impressively stupid society.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      It's a medical condition.
      And there are a lot of data you can get from tracking a persons menstrual cycle.

      Maybe look at is as a bad actor?

      There are a lot of horrible parent and religious zealot parents. Imagine they find out there daughter menstrual cycle change? or it stopped missed two, and then started? Oh, she got pregnant? then they toss there 16 year old daughter out onto the street.
      Yes, that happens.

      OH, and employer find out you missed a cycle, better 'downsize' her out before she tells people publicl

  • The number of incels posting is appalling. Get a life.

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