Everyone knows about your period
Imagine that you are a teenage girl who recently got her first period. You have a lot of questions about your menstrual cycle and reproductive health and are not sure where to get your questions answered. Your friend recommends a menstrual cycle tracking app that she’s been using, so you decide to download the same menstrual cycle tracking app to educate yourself. You assume that the app is a safe space to share your personal information and ask questions about whether or not to be concerned that your period came late. You assume that no one else knows about the details of your period except the app and you. But what if I tell you that there’s someone else, or multiple people out there in the world that know about all the details of your tracked menstrual cycle and reproductive health history? This is what has happened to many users of menstrual cycle tracking apps such as one of the most popular women’s health apps, the Flo app. As a company that markets themselves as promoting female empowerment, sharing users’ private information to other companies without their consent and knowledge exemplifies that Flo does not actually empower their users.
Launched in April 2015, the Flo App quickly grew to popularity and has continued to gain many users to this day. The app is especially known for utilizing artificial intelligence to control multiple app features. Additionally, the Flo app provides reproductive health information verified by real OB-GYns. The Flo app has also had various collaborations with research universities to research more about topics such as patterns in female reproductive health. Initially it was created so that women could have more control over their reproductive health and to reduce the stigma of talking about menstrual cycles openly. This got many women excited that there was a way to easily get access to information about their reproductive health. You can track your period, learn about what your symptoms mean, and learn how to get pregnant if you want.
Now as you can see, the information that the user shares with the Flo App is all very sensitive information such as the frequency in which they have sex, their sex drive history, and symptoms from their periods such as vaginal discharge. You’d think that this sensitive information would not be available to others without the user’s knowledge. Think again. Between the years of 2016 and 2019, the Flo app was sharing user’s personal information with companies such as Facebook without their users’ consent. This is a huge violation of privacy towards women and their personal information.
The Flo app can be labeled as a Femtech technology. According to Gilman in Periods for profit and the rise of menstrual surveillance, some express that Femtech promotes itself as technology that prioritizes women empowerment, but there are many aspects of this technology that aren’t empowering. (Gilman, Michele 2021). Women’s data being shared without their consent is an example of taking away power from the woman rather than empowering the woman. According to D’ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. in Data Feminism, “Far too often, the problem is not that data about minoritized groups are missing but the reverse: the databases and data systems of powerful institutions are built on the excessive surveillance of minoritized groups.” (D’ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F., 2020). Femtech such as menstrual tracking apps have taken a part of the growing surveillance culture which continuously undermines users’ control of their private information. Additionally these Femtech corporations themselves are not prioritizing the users as they should, but prioritizing their profit instead. (D’ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F., 2020).
While researching about the Flo app and Femtech companies, I realized how much power and control these companies have over our sensitive information. As technology becomes more and more implemented into our daily tasks and routines, our digital footprint continues to grow. The online world has a way of tracking a person’s every move the way the offline world never was able to before the online world was created. And it’s even more difficult to get rid of our digital footprints that only continue to grow. Although many tech companies may claim that users will remain anonymous if they share personal information with the companies, there’s still ways that others can go about figuring out that certain information matches with you.
Since technology is rapidly growing to become very utilized in modern society, it almost seems impossible to go about a day to day life without using technology whatsoever in order to avoid privacy concerns. This is a dilemma that is hard to figure out. But nevertheless, change still needs to be made if we are going to continue growing this digital age.
According to Donna Rosato in What Your Period Tracker App Knows About You from Consumer Reports, “Unlike medical records held by doctors and hospitals, the information collected by health-focused apps isn’t covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a 1996 federal law that limits where healthcare providers can share your health information” (Rosato, 2020). Just knowing this feels so unsettling. As a user of these menstrual cycle tracking apps, we’ll never know for sure who in the world has seen our sensitive information. It could be one employee at Facebook or 1000 employees at Google. The Flo App already has over 100 million users, I wonder how all the users feel about their privacy potentially being compromised. I would guess that many would feel powerless and anxious.
As a woman myself, this is definitely concerning. I wouldn’t want other people to know details about my period and my menstrual cycle, and I would feel betrayed if a menstrual tracking app I was using shared that information without me knowing. Unfortunately, the Flo app and other menstrual tracking apps sharing users’ private information without their knowledge is only one of the many examples of how digital companies everyday violate women’s online privacy. According to Chang in the article What Women Know about the Internet, “Several studies have found that women are more concerned about privacy risks online than men” (Chang, 2019). One of the main reasons why this is is because the impacts of privacy risks are far worse for women than men. “Some features of digital life have been constructed, intentionally or not, in ways that make women feel less safe, (Chang, 2019). According to Roth in Privacy is a Privilege: How Surveillance Culture Impacts Women, “Consumer Report says allowing an app to share this information can impact a woman’s ability to obtain life insurance and could determine the cost of coverage. Additionally, women might be subjected to workplace discrimination based on the information collected by the apps, including pregnancy status or health conditions.” (Roth, 2021). All this shows how misogyny and online privacy violations can continue to affect women’s lives offline in their everyday lives and workplace.
It is evident that there needs to be drastic changes implemented to these Femtech companies in order to protect female users’ privacy. Since Femtech companies are marketed as technology that promotes female empowerment and feminism, it’s time that they start actually showing their users that they are what they claim. Firstly, Femtech companies need to actually protect the users’ private information and stop sharing it with other companies without the users’ knowledge and consent. When users give out their information, they are also putting their trust in the company. Users deserve to know where their information is going, and who will have access to it.
Additionally, there needs to be much more diversity within Femtech companies. The technology industry is dominated by males. With more female representation in these companies, there will be more opportunity for women to have a voice and have input into the design of these apps. Furthermore, there needs to be more women in leadership positions for these companies. According to Costanza-Chock in Design Justice, “Even when women and/or B/I/PoC are employed in technology design, development, and product management, only a handful have positions at the top of these extremely hierarchical organizations.” (Costanza-Chock, 2018). If female employees at these companies find something problematic in the design process of these technologies and make a complaint about it, it will still be very difficult for actual change to be implemented to these technologies because they’re not in these leadership positions where they have more power and control in the company. This creates an unfair gender disparity in these companies, which directly negatively affects women and their voice in the company. This means that our female health apps are mainly being created and controlled by men. Since women are going to understand the female experience and perspective the most, I feel like it makes the most sense for women to have more input into these apps that are targeted towards their demographic group. Having a lack of female representation in the decision room of these companies will lead to a biased perspective without consideration of other perspectives. Having the lived experience of being a woman, female employees and leaders would fully understand the many dangers women face on a daily basis because of their gender, and the increased safety concerns women have on digital spaces. This would increase concern for users’ privacies to be protected. This would also be an effective way that Femtech companies can actually show through their actions how their company is actively practicing female empowerment. Ultimately, users are not dumb and will be able to see through facades that companies put up. Users want to know that these companies are practicing what they preach.
I feel like we don’t necessarily have to get rid of all menstrual cycle tracking apps and female health apps. There have been some positive benefits that have come out of these apps. For instance, these apps have collaborated with research universities to do studies on menstrual cycles and female health. Talking about menstrual cycles publicly has been considered taboo for a long time among many parts of the world. Having a popular app that promotes female health education can help reduce the stigma of talking about menstrual cycles and reproductive health, encouraging more women to not be ashamed of their menstrual cycles and owning their sexuality. A free resource for women to learn more about their reproductive systems and how they work can be really helpful. However the only way that all these positive benefits can take place in an empowering way is if these apps make it an instrumental priority to protect their users privacy. Many of my friends have told me that they use these menstrual cycle tracking apps for multiple purposes and find them very helpful in helping them understand their reproductive system more and its function. Even though I expressed to them my concerns for their online privacy to be violated, most of them decided not to delete the app because they were already used to using the app in their daily life. I don’t want my friends nor other women to lose the benefits they have by deleting these menstrual cycle tracking apps. But I do want their privacy to be protected on these menstrual cycle tracking apps. I don’t want them to have the stress of having to weigh the pros and cons of keeping an app on their phone. Tech companies developing technologies, especially the ones targeted towards minorities and women, desperately need to do better.
Hopefully one day women can login to their menstrual cycle tracking app on the phone, and not have to worry about who can see every move they make on the app.
