This has been going on for a while. I sat in a meeting 20+ years ago at a data mining company where they proudly proclaimed that they could track women's cycles from purchase history. It doesn't take a dedicated app for this data to get out. All it takes is a 28 day autocorrelation to find the signal.
When tracking your period lets companies track you
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Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Between this, and Peloton and eBay doing portscans of your network, anyone who made fun of people for tech paranoia should be feeling pretty ashamed of themselves right about now for what we've allowed to become commonplace, while simultaneously acknowledging it's only enabled by society ghosting its responsibility to learn tech.
I can't remember exactly which smart device it was, but I think it was my Wyze Watch that asked for wayyyyyy too much information during setup. Like, dear watch, how's my sex, birthday, size and weight gonna help you do your job? I got you to 1) show the time 2) have alarms that I can set without using the phone, like in bed 3) monitor my sleep 4) check my heartrate and saturation when I exercise. There's literally 0…
Age, sex, size and weight are needed to accurately count calories. Now, whether you should sacrifice your private data for some slight extra accuracy in counting calories, thst another story.
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't remember exactly which smart device it was, but I think it was my Wyze Watch that asked for wayyyyyy too much information during setup. Like, dear watch, how's my sex, birthday, size and weight gonna help you do your job? I got you to 1) show the time 2) have alarms that I can set without using the phone, like in bed 3) monitor my sleep 4) check my heartrate and saturation when I exercise. There's literally 0…
Age, sex, size and weight are needed to accurately count calories. Now, whether you should sacrifice your private data for some slight extra accuracy in counting calories, thst another story.
To be clear, they're needed to accurately count calories out. You can count calories in perfectly accurately without them.
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#14Is there a transcript? Not a fan of audio or video forms of information, far easier to read. However, no surprise. Literally every app anymore ought to be considered from the perspective of, "What can this app possibly get from my phone, by technical standards, regardless of what I think of that?" It's got accelerometer data and gyro data? It's doing something nasty with it. It's got location data? Oh, baby, hope it'…
> There is no such thing as an app anymore that works in your interest, as a guiding first order principle.
There's Free Software.
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#15Validates my decision to self-host and donate to Baby Buddy: https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy
I figured all those “free” (and possibly even the paid) baby apps were likely doing all sorts of shady things with that data. One thing for me to use a period/fertility tracker for myself - quite another to throw my child’s data up to god knows who for god knows what ends long before he could possibly consent.
If you don’t know why it matters how many diapers there have been in the last 24 hours and what kind of mess was in there, along with how often and how much milk was consumed, you’ve obviously not been the primary caretaker of an infant recently. If you don’t know why you’d want an app for that, ditto - “mommy brain” is real.
Pro-tip: set up and test your Baby Buddy instance well before your due date - including having your partner try using it on their device.
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#16This has been going on for a while. I sat in a meeting 20+ years ago at a data mining company where they proudly proclaimed that they could track women's cycles from purchase history. It doesn't take a dedicated app for this data to get out. All it takes is a 28 day autocorrelation to find the signal.
[1] has an HN discussion from 2012 on “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”
[2] is the non-paywalled NYT article being discussed and linked to in the thread.
It starts: “Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: ‘If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?’”
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#17Validates my decision to self-host and donate to Baby Buddy: https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy I figured all those “free” (and possibly even the paid) baby apps were likely doing all sorts of shady things with that data. One thing for me to use a period/fertility tracker for myself - quite another to throw my child’s data up to god knows who for god knows what ends long before he could possibly consent. If you d…
Maybe there is a market for paid apps and services that do not sell your data?
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#18Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#19Validates my decision to self-host and donate to Baby Buddy: https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy I figured all those “free” (and possibly even the paid) baby apps were likely doing all sorts of shady things with that data. One thing for me to use a period/fertility tracker for myself - quite another to throw my child’s data up to god knows who for god knows what ends long before he could possibly consent. If you d…
I also used baby buddy and it was great.
Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you
#20This has been going on for a while. I sat in a meeting 20+ years ago at a data mining company where they proudly proclaimed that they could track women's cycles from purchase history. It doesn't take a dedicated app for this data to get out. All it takes is a 28 day autocorrelation to find the signal.
[1] has an HN discussion from 2012 on “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did” [2] is the non-paywalled NYT article being discussed and linked to in the thread. It starts: “Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: ‘If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pr…
I remember that one. Marketing as a profession really seems to attract sociopaths. I'm not sure the people who enable them are much better.