Be Weary of Using Period Tracking Apps

Every month, 1.8 billion people across the world menstruate. Many people who menstruate choose to utilize period tracking apps (ex: Flo, Clue) for reasons including convenience, monitoring health, trying to conceive, and more. With that being said, I have observed growing concern about the privacy practices of these for-profit apps. Especially in light of the current threats to women’s healthcare and looming legal punishment for abortions and even miscarriages, it is vital to understand the dangers of the wrong people having access to menstrual data. One systematic analysis of menstrual app privacy policies from 2020 revealed that common pieces of personal data such as name, email, etc. are treated appropriately by most applications in this field. However, data that is related to the user’s reproductive health is not covered by the privacy policies in the majority of applications evaluated. In other words, even though this data is crucial to the applications main function, there tends to be less privacy policies protecting such data in comparison to less sensitive information. This violates multiple declarations of data feminists such as in the Feminist Data Manifest-No and the novel Data Feminism which suggests huge ethical issues with these privacy policies. With all this considered, all menstruating people should be weary about inputting their personal data on period tracking apps.

This particular issue of the safety of period tracking apps hits home for me. On May 2nd, 2022, I woke up to see the Politico news from the Supreme Court indicating that Roe v. Wade would be overturned. My mom, who protested in the 70s to ensure she and her children would have reproductive justice, was the first person I texted about it. I messaged her, “Roe got overturned” and she replied with an expletive, followed up by a text that read “Delete that period app of your phone right now!” At first, I didn’t understand the urgency nor the need. I thought, why would an app that sends cute reminders to me when my period is coming up have any capacity for harm? But she insisted I did so, and I begrudgingly agreed. Little did I know that later that month, I would come across the KHN news article Should You Worry About Data From Your Period-Tracking App Being Used Against You? The article described the mass amount of people who went to social media to voice their concerns about the lack of privacy that is afforded to data on period tracking apps in the wake of Roe v Wade being overturned. Individuals from all backgrounds and especially residents of states with newly implemented strict abortion bans opted to delete all of the data off of period tracking apps. Attorney Elizabeth McLaughlin even tweeted “If you are using an online period tracker or tracking your cycles through your phone, get off it and delete your data.” Reading this was only the beginning of understanding my mother’s concern about me using those apps in a post Roe v. Wade world and catapulted me into researching privacy afforded to reproductive data. Now, I have access to more academic explanations of the reasons data commodification can be so dangerous. For instance, a quote from Chapter 6 of Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein summarized my feelings about this data usage perfectly: “Instead of taking data at face value and looking toward future insights, data scientists can first interrogate the context, limitations, and validity of the data under use.” Clearly, from academic experts to those of us on twitter, there is an evident, serious responsibility for period app companies to respect and handle user data with care.

So, before getting into the logistics of how data can be commodified or the history of surveillance over women’s bodies, I want to provide some background about who the customer base is for apps like these. Because the applications offer a wide variety of services, many users engage with the apps for different reasons: some wish only to track their period, some people are attempting to conceive more efficiently, others may like to monitor their health through tracking their cycle. Some people even rely solely on these apps as their primary form of contraceptive. While I support everyone’s autonomy to monitor their bodily functions how they like, some of the biggest privacy concerns have to do with the extremely personal data the user base requests. The app requests information on data like blood flow (light to heavy) as well as more unexpected measurements like body temperature, cervical fluid, and ovulation tests, orgasms, use of contraceptives, or the time of day sex took place.

When it comes to available literature on this topic, there is not as much as there should be given this urgent ethical issue. Unfortunately, academia historically tends to overlook and neglect subjects associated with women, like menstruation. That being said, one notable study led by London researchers Laura Shipp and Jorge Blasco titled “How private is your period?: A systematic analysis of menstrual app privacy policies” used a mixed-method approach to evaluate 30 different apps that identify as period tracking applications. The applications evaluated in this study include My Calendar, Clue, Flo, Lilly Tracker, Petal, MyPeriodTracker, and other leading applications. They aimed to answer the following three questions: How well do developers inform menstrual users about their privacy practices within their policies and privacy communications? Is the information they provide clear and understandable? And most importantly? And do apps behave differently in reality in comparison to what is stated in their policy? The answers to these questions were absolutely shocking to me. Results of this study essentially stated that the scope of the privacy policies of all 30 apps surveyed varied, but overall there were glaring ethical issues on how such personal data is categorized and handled by large corporations. Not one app was an outlier in how terrible its privacy policy was but rather every policy assessed was underwhelming and did not adequately protect user’s data.

In my opinion, the best way to evaluate the ethics of the current state of period app privacy policies is to assess them through a data-feminist framework. For instance, only 20% of the apps evaluated explicitly stated that they required period dates within their respective privacy policies. While this might not seem like a huge deal to many people, a data feminist perspective beg to differ. In fact, they would be quite concerned with the pattern of app developers regarding period and sexual health related data as non sensitive while it is actually health data that is extremely personal. This specific issue violates rule number 4 of The Feminist Data Manifest-No, which states data feminist should refuse data that has been dehumanized. Instead, it is vital that we, as the Manifesto-No directs, integrate and contextualize data on the axis of embodied difference. Apps that sell menstrual data are in direct violation and as data feminists warn, dehumanized data can have catastrophic consequences. So for menstruators reading this, know that feminist perspectives are essential to fully understanding ethics of data privacy and ways to protect your own data from misusage. All in all, I think that authors of the Manifest-No Marika Cifor and Patricia Garcia would be quite concerned with the current state of privacy afforded to users on these apps.

While I wrap up this post, I want to leave readers with some suggestions on how to protect your data and harm reduction strategies if using online period tracking apps is a non-negotiable. One tactic a few people have proposed is going back to the old fashioned way of tracking anything— a pencil and a paper calendar for period tracking. In addition, for people who prefer to use online systems, the app Flo has created what’s known as Anonymous Mode to preserve privacy for reproductive health data. As Flo presents it, “Anonymous Mode introduces an even deeper layer of privacy for reproductive health data. Anonymous Mode gives any Flo user the option to access the app without name, email address, and technical identifiers from being associated with the health data, marking Flo the first female health app to take this level of precaution in terms of privacy and security.” Scroll up to the top of the blog to see images I included of the Flo interface while in Anonymous Mode. As of the time this blog is published, I have not found any evidence that other competing apps have similar features. So in my opinion, if one is firm on using an online application to track their period, using Flo in Anonymous Mode is the best option available right now. But overall, please be weary of using these types of applications.