Female Health Apps Misuse Highly Sensitive Data, Calling For Ethical Changes
By Ina Kim
Women’s health apps are designed to collect data for a woman’s menstrual cycle, pregnancy tracking, fertility, or general well-being. While the idea of tracking a lot of information at once may sound like a positive aspect for women, women’s health apps are often considered untrustworthy because they can easily leak private information.
There are numerous problems as to why women’s health apps are under privacy violations. One of the examples is “dark patterns,” or tricking users into giving private information intentionally, like buying something that you didn’t mean to. This is one of the biggest reasons why women’s health apps cannot be trusted. The idea of users unintentionally leaking private information is a problem, especially through the tricks that a women’s health app can use. Computer science researcher, Lisa Meikoussa Malki, points out that the women’s health apps are not only collecting data relating to a user’s health but also physical safety implications. An example Malki explains is that if the condition of someone’s pregnancy is exposed without permission, this can lead to discrimination in the workplace.
"Mismanaging or leaking reproductive health data can lead to dire consequences, with blackmail, discrimination, and violence being among the worst," said Dr. Ruba Abu-Salma, the lead author of a study that examined the privacy policies and data safety labels of 20 of the most popular apps geared toward women.
The phrase “We don’t sell your data” is most common in apps, indicating that they promise not to leak any personal information about your identity. However, much of the data that apps collect is still sensitive information about the user, such as their IP address and their click-through history. As such, stating “We don’t sell your data” can be misleading, especially if an app might possibly share the user’s behavioral data with third parties for advertising.
Malki’s advice for women and other users who use mobile health apps is that they should be looking for a deletion feature in the app for their data or account and even be able to reach out to the developers of the app for any sort of issue. Deleting apps immediately after finding out about privacy violations does not surely help protect user data because the developers often have backups to their own servers. Health app users can also protect themselves from privacy violations in many other ways. Notice if apps mention third-party data and if a user’s data is being sold, avoid data sharing (location, contacts, etc.), and even enter only crucial health data.
While the concern of privacy violations in health apps can arise, developers argue that health apps need personal data in order to fully customize the user’s dietary plans and fitness goals and health tracking overall. Health apps will soon evolve, which means they will become more advanced in using personal data to give users all of their necessary services.
It is estimated that 50 million women globally use health apps to track menstruation, pregnancy, fertility, and other well-being. Apps that let users provide information are a simple way to monitor health and may even become easier to use in the future. However, it is important to be cautious when it comes to sharing personal information by paying attention to how an app stores data and knowing when to limit yourself from sharing more and more private data.
Evan Greer, deputy director of the non-profit advocacy group Fight for the Future, explains that the safest manner to protect personal data is only using apps that specifically preserve data locally rather than in the cloud. “Because any app where a company [that could receive a subpoena] has access to their users’ data could make it vulnerable for a legal request.”
