Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report
www.cam.ac.uk
Cambridge researchers urge public health bodies like the NHS to provide trustworthy, research-driven alternatives to platforms driven by profit.

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.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    22·
    3 days ago

    And which phone has a libre radio baseband? Perhaps extremism ad absurdum is not useful advice.

              • 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.worldEnglish
                32·
                3 days ago

                Apple already fixed it years ago when they released iOS 12.

                Backing up health records data

                You can use iCloud to store your Health data, including health records, using end-to-end encryption (requires iOS 12 or later and two-factor authentication). Health and health records data is also included in local iTunes backups, if you’ve configured your iTunes backups to be encrypted.

                https://support.apple.com/en-us/111755

                Can you name a phone that has open source basebands that has a FLOSS license attached to it? Surely if you’re arguing against apple, you are not using a phone that has proprietary blobs in the firmware.

                • Autonomous User@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  3 days ago

                  Wrong, as shown above, Apple Health fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.

                  ‘Open source’ misses the point of libre software.