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.
For christ sake, is there no open source option for such a simple task?
Edit:
2 people here could point to drip within 15 minutes of my post, and a third to the fact there are options on F-droid. So why the fuck don’t women just use that?
Well i guess the ones with harmful advertising have better graphics or somemeting. Or the fact they allow advertising makes them more visible on google play. And you probably can’t even get drip on iPhones.There is! It’s called drip and is a project started by a berlin-based feminist collective iirc.
Free, open-source, local data only
Thank you! Had no idea this existed
Also trans inclusive which has the double benefit of not being the cliché pink. :)
So why the fuck don’t women just use that?
They probably don’t know about it. If I search “period tracker” on Google Play, Drip is in about 40th place in the results. That’s several screens down, past a bunch of search suggestions, and the parts where it’s open source, on-device, and optionally encrypted aren’t clear until I tap on it and read the description.
And you probably can’t even get drip on iPhones.
There’s some irony in a comment dealing with people making decisions that are against their interests because they’re insufficiently informed speculating incorrectly about something like this when it’s easy to check. Drip is, in fact available for iPhone.
Yeah, discoverability is a massive issue on the Play store. If it doesn’t bring Daddy Google 30% of whatever they shovel through in ad money or mtx, then you won’t see it.
I’m not sure what the best answer to that is. I don’t think it’s forcing Google to improve its search results.
I want it to be the average person gaining a baseline level of computer and media literacy such that they seek out and find apps that cannot send sensitive data to third parties without the user’s clear intent, but I don’t think we’ll ever get there.
Unfortunately I think the age of computer literacy came and went. Phones don’t even seem to want you to know that a file is a thing.
The fact that I got 3 responses that stated it is available on F-droid made me think that. F-droid does not have anything iPhone, because you can’t side-load on iPhone.
tiny teams with limited resources.
If the apps work as intended, it doesn’t really matter.
i’d like to point out that it shouldn’t be on women (or anyone) to be on constant guard against attacks on their privacy.
yes, it is the state of the world, but the attitude of your comment is victim blaming.
let’s not forget that while we on Lemmy may be aware of the danger of mass surveillance tech, we’re not the majority.
snowden told us years ago how fucked everything is, and surveillance has only grown since then. let’s not forget that it is not normal that corpo data-mining is the norm (along with included de-facto warrantless surveillance). Even though we all should be better, nobody should have to be as careful as we are.
hell, let’s be real. As long as we use a smartphone, we’re not being careful enough either.
Oh for fucks sake, I already apologized twice.
But still walking alone into a dark alley at night in a questionable neighborhood is not the smartest thing if you don’t want to be assaulted.if you don’t want to be assaulted.
you don’t have to apologize, that’s not my point. in fact i want you to quietly think about how what you said before, and just now might be wrong til it hits home for you.
i know it seems like im baiting an answer. its the net, arguing is fun, nothing’s stopping you from replying, but I’m being straight with you. stop victim blaming. you’re not stupid, im not saying you are. *please, stop. it only helps the oppressor, and we’re all getting stomped by that boot.
i want you to know im not tryina bust your chops specifically. sure, i picked your comment to reply to, but it’s nothing personal.
I’m also speaking broadly to the room, reminding everybody what we already know; that how we look at pervasive surveillance n how we got to live under it is absolutely broken.
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Periodical. Local storage only, f-droid.
Drip looks to be available on Google Play, App Store and F-Droid.
It probably has a lot to do with informing people.
Feedback I’ve heard about Drip was that the interface was slightly wanting. Which is a shame. Sample of one, bear in mind!
I think many women just do not know it exists or do not know about the risks of using other apps
Like…a spreadsheet?
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Because they don’t care. Even if it leads to potential abortion legal charges.
I happen to be a penis owner.
So what would happen if I were to install and use such a monthly tracker app and pretend I’ve been having regular monthlies for a while, then suddenly I miss a couple periods, then suddenly start having periods again?
Would the cops come beating my door down claiming I had an abortion? 🤔
Fuck this dystopian mass surveillance shit!
Would the cops come beating my door down claiming I had an abortion? 🤔
I don’t think that has happened starting from a period tracking app yet. There was a case involving an unencrypted messaging app used to discuss a criminalized abortion.
I think even something like Drip is not sufficient in this kind of situation. If the police can compel someone to unlock their phone and decrypt data, then being local-only won’t stop them. Of course it’s a lot easier to ensure that no data exists if it’s local-only and something happens that might attract the interest of the police.
Nothing in this comment should be construed as legal advice.
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I actually own 2 penises, I keep the spare in a jar in case of an emergency.
/s 😂🤣
I keep track of my wife’s period.
I use mensinator on fdroid made by two woman.
https://github.com/EmmaTellblom/Mensinator
She didn’t do it, so I had to.
Congratulations, is it paid off?
Drip (Android/iOS)
Use free and open source software to protect your data. This goes for everybody on any device.
My wife just asks me to grab her boobs and I can generally let her know several days out and be accurate to within half a day.
You need to teach me this skill. Any excuse to get frisky with my wife.
How adorable
Made my own desktop app in python (tkinter) which encrypts the data with GPG. It has predictions and potential ovulation days. The predictions seem pretty accurate so far.
Has “if it makes a funny noise I’ll shoot the computer” vibes, love it
Haha thanks. If you want to check it out, the link is: https://codeberg.org/kingorgg/period_tracker
I haven’t tried it on windows though, so I’m not sure if it will work properly on there. It’s just a personal project for now. The UI is pretty basic too.
File this under “no shit.”
that was my initial thought too, but then I remembered that if may not be so obvious to those who aren’t like-minded like that. it’s still good to share with friends and family who might not know about it
Yes of course but it’s marketing data.
Marketing data. We need it for marketing to people so they can spend money.
Don’t you understand! Marketing data!!!
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Many city’s don’t allow neon at all. ☹️
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As a trans woman, I make sure to log my irregular bi-weekly periods on flo to make sure their data is tip top!
flo app makes $192 million a year with 5 million paying users, which seems absolutely wild to me for something that covers such a basic need
I legitimately have an idea for an app that solves this problem. Its key feature, besides being open source, would be that people without uteruses could use it too, making any data conceivably collected useless.
I don’t have the skills to make it myself (yet), but if any developer wants to talk I’ll give the idea away. I just want it to be made.
App would be open source, all data local. Perhaps the option to sync to encrypted iCloud or Android equivalent, but certainly not a cloud-based option you need a new login for. All the features currently in these kinds of apps and that make them useful for menstruating people. Now replace “period” with “hair cut”. Non-menstruating people can now use it, earnestly, for tracking when their last hair cut was, making it useful and the data (if it were to be collected somehow) just noise.
I even have a name in mind: “hair**.**cuts” (heavy emphasis on the period in the name.) Idea is that anyone with it on their device has plausible deniability that they are using it for period tracking, but the “period” in the name is an implicit wink so we all know what it’s really being used for.
That is pretty cool. But I have to think since the US is the country in which this is pertinent an iOS app would be most effective.
You could even expand this idea by being able to add different things to track and give it a name yourself!
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past performance may not predict future. js. mark a calendar
If you have an iPhone just use the Apple Health app. It works great and the data is encrypted and never shared with anyone.
Wrong, Apple Health fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software. Does Apple really think we are this easy to scam? Others here have given a solution.
What fact did I get wrong? Be specific.
never shared with anyone.
Anti-libre software, Apple Health, bans us from proving this and worse, bans us from fixing it. We do not control it. 🚩 Others here have already given a solution.
And which phone has a libre radio baseband? Perhaps extremism ad absurdum is not useful advice.
Getting an app like drip, libre software, is not ‘extremism’. lmao
I didn’t realize those were baseband firmwares. Neat!
Some people never learn.
No woman in the US should be tracking their period in any sort of app or software.
Drip, the app mentioned several times in this thread, let’s you encrypt the locally stored database with a password you have to enter every time you open the app. How is that not safer than a random piece of paper?
It’s so exhausting that this thread is full of men telling women what they should and shouldn’t do while having very little knowledge about the topic.
And of people who assume the genders of others.
I’m sorry if I misgendered you. I was already exhausted from the other comments that clearly state that they are men and probably was biased in that regard. But my point still stands that there is no reason to completely forego tracking apps.
Yeah, and of course I haven’t looked into all of the tech and security of ways to set up these apps. I’m just exhausted myself from it seeming like nothing is ever 100% secure or free from risk, and I’m so cynical about the country I live in and what it will become in the future that I would just rather not trust anything at this point. I’m sure that doesn’t 100% hold water/is completely rational, but it’s where my head is.
I get that. It shouldn’t be necessary to do research just to be sure it’s safe. I apologise for my aggressive tone. It must be really scary and exhausting to live somewhere like that. My country is still holding up but seems to be sliding slowly in that direction too.
So do whatever makes you stay safe and feel safe.
I appreciate it and you
Convenience wins out 99% of the time. Why carry a pen/paper when one can use the same device they already carry around? Hell, I don’t even use pen/paper anymore because my phone handles all that for me.
That said, I did set up some infrastructure at home that I use to store as much of my private data as possible.
Apple Health encrypts your data and never sends it to anyone else.
