Menstrual app makers pledge to protect user privacy after US abortion ruling

The conservative majority in the Court on Friday rejected the 1973 ruling in the Roe v. Wade, who establishes the federal right to abortion in the United States. This ruling now gives individual states wide scope to ban termination of pregnancy.

The personal data that various apps collect (such as location data in Google Maps, search history in a search engine, or even menstrual data in a specialized app like Flo) can now pose a major risk to the users of those apps. Democratic politicians warned of this well before the vote. In May, they asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai to stop collecting location data that could be traced back to individual users.

Now that the national right to abortion is indeed coming to an end, those concerns have only increased. Until now, it has mostly been about whether consumer data can be misused by tech companies for commercial gain. This is how Flo . is under the magnifying glass with the Federal Trade Commission because the US trade watchdog suspects the maker of this menstrual app that users’ data is being shared with advertisers.

States can use user data as evidence against citizens

After the ruling in the case Roe vs. Wade fears that not advertisers, but governments will look at the data with more than ordinary interest. Conservative states could turn to the tech companies to request data from users with which those states can collect evidence against residents who are suspected of having an abortion.

“We expect tech companies to receive subpoenas for citizen search histories,” said Dana Sussman of nonprofit The National Advocates for Pregnant Women against news channel CNBC. And according to Corynne McSherry of the civil rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, the problem is that everything that tech companies make possible can also be abused.

Some makers of cycle-tracking apps don’t want to wait for subpoena lawyers to knock on doors and demand clients’ sensitive data. Apps like Natural Cycles, Clue and the aforementioned Flo are used by millions of Americans to track their menstrual cycle and fertile periods. Information about irregularities in those cycles could contribute as evidence in an abortion case, the makers of the apps fear.

Menstrual apps come with special anonymous mode

Flo already announced on Friday that it will come with a special anonymous mode within the app, so that data can never be traced back to the user and states that data can therefore not be requested. Berlin-based Clue, meanwhile, emphasizes on Twitter once again that it always stands up for its users and will never hand over data, while Natural Cycles, like Flo, has a ‘totally anonymous experience‘ promises.

Marijn Sax, researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam, is not really impressed by all these fresh promises. ‘The business models of these types of companies is no different than of pokemon go: collect as many users as possible and keep them on the app for as long as possible.’ According to Sax, the promises made by the app makers in the field of privacy are unclear, and if they are clear, they are not always fulfilled.

The tech sector is built on broken promises

‘Apps like Flo are completely designed to give the user a safe, pleasant and familiar feeling. But that’s the outside: they’re made to make false promises.” Sax calls this problematic, because many consumers will underestimate the dangers. And those dangers are clear: collecting user data.

The researcher fears that this will remain the case even with the latest promises. The tech sector is built on broken promises. You don’t have to be cynical to see a conscious pattern in this.’ Moreover: ‘Anonymization is not an on and off switch, but a scale. We’ll have to see how anonymous those health apps really will become.’