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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Intimate data, including when people have had sex, is being shared with Facebook, a study from Privacy International has suggested.
It included details such as what contraception was used, when periods were due and the type of symptoms experienced.
Since the investigation, one app said it was changing its privacy policies.
Menstruation apps collect some of the most intimate data imaginable - from general health, to information about sex, moods, what the user eats, drinks and even what sanitary products she uses.
In exchange for this, the app will offer the user the dates of the month she is most fertile or when to expect her next period.
Sharing to Facebook happens via the social network's software development kit (SDK), tools that can be used by apps to help them make money by reaching advertisers who, in turn, provide users with personalised ads.
PI found the most popular apps in this category - Period Tracker, Period Track Flo and Clue Period Tracker did not share data with Facebook.
But others - such as Maya by Plackal Tech (which has 5 million downloads on Google Play), MIA by Mobapp Development Limited (1 million downloads) and My Period Tracker by Linchpin Health (more than 1 million downloads) - did.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:50AM (5 children)
There is an old saying: three can keep a secret if two are dead. When an app is being used, there are three people who have the data: the user, the app, and anyone/anything that has access to the app's data store (okay, so maybe more, a LOT more, than three people).
Why does anyone feel the need to do this? If it must be done, why not use an Excel spreadsheet or something? Know what I call MY period tracker? A calendar!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @03:41AM
Yeah, but this should still be illegal; a lot of people fall for this nonsense, and even give away other people's data. Privacy regulations should be so strict that companies like Facebook can no longer afford to exist.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday September 11 2019, @04:24AM (1 child)
Or, you know, use a Free app that respects you.
My wife uses this one [arnowelzel.de].
I use apps from F-Droid as often as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:22AM
I use apps from F-Droid when possible as well. But phones are pretty opaque about the difference between data that's private and data that's shared with the world. I'm not sure how to do better about that: any app that is granted internet access can share its data with the world and that's pretty much every app (in part because they want internet access for ads).
Maybe app stores could require explicit disclosure of privacy impacts. That is, something like "this app shares all data you enter with advertising partners" vs. "this app's data only leaves the device as encrypted backups" vs. "this app's data is private to your device" (erm, with better wording and probably a color-coded badge). At least if the app store page had a badge like that there would be some possibility people would be informed the privacy choices they were making, even if most people would ignore it. Currently, there's no reasonable way for a common user to suspect that an app is exfiltrating their data other than somehow being informed by a more technical friend or family member of the (justified) paranoia that probably every single app is. In practice, such a scheme would probably be too difficult to enforce and too easily ignored.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:32AM (1 child)
Is that a paper calendar or on a computer?
You know that Excel spreadsheet is probably not shared with anyone. At worst, Microsoft may have access to it (Office pushes saving things to OneDrive pretty strongly; users could easily get confused and not realize they've shared their documents with Microsoft; I've never used Excel on iOS/Android, so I don't know if it even has an option to not share your documents with Microsoft), but they probably aren't analyzing it for period tracking patterns.
On the other hand, how is a common user to know that trusting Excel with their data is okay but trusting this specific period tracker is not. Both appear to be ways to write data down on their own device. Phone apps do an extremely poor job of communicating to users where their data could possibly be shared. It's common to assume this means users don't care about their privacy when another likely explanation is that users have no way to know whether their privacy is being invaded. Unsurprisingly, information they don't know doesn't affect their behavior.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:03PM
Paper calendar. And, your points are fair, but they also serve to highlight just how dirty people are being done by these companies. I don't see a solution, as "big data" is making too much money for too many people for virtually no effort, and money is the same thing as political power these days :/
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...