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When tracking your period lets companies track you

npr.org

21–30 of 141 posts

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#21
post #15

Validates 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 created a simple spreadsheet that we printed out / filled out each week. It worked great. No need for an app.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#22
post #7

Hot take: all these body tracking apps do almost nothing to actually help you be healthy or improve your life, and the only reason that people feel a need to use them is because advertising has convinced them that it is “part of a healthy diet”. Whether or not they invade your privacy, they reduce your idea of your health to a set of numbers that are divorced from the actual reality of your life and your overall well…

That's not the case here, and it is probably prudent not to simply dismiss tracking apps if they are things you'd need/want to track anyway. While tracking your monthly cycle won't necessarily make you healthier, there are a number of ways it keeps you healthy and improves your life. This sort of tracking is one folks have been doing since well before we generally had internet: I was told back in middle school in the late 80s and early 90s, for example, that I should track it.

Not everyone does it, but most of the folks that don't will do so if they are doing things like trying to get pregnant, know when their mood will change, or are having other issues. I'm pretty sure that menstruation issues are the real thing that lowers your overall wellbeing. I've experienced this very thing, and I've needed the dates when things have gone wrong... or simply when I have had to go to the hospital/doctors, since they always seem to ask when I first started my last period.

Something on your phone simply makes it easier, especially since most folks take their phones into the bathroom with them from time to time. I just use a notetaking app, though, mostly due to privacy.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#23
One solution to this is legally enforceable, personal ownership of ones data.

Distributed machine learning makes it possible to proffer data for insights without necessarily sharing it off-device. And unlocking some functionality in exchange.

I'm sure more elaborate patterns of exchanges are possible. Is anyone working on this?

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#24
post #15

Validates 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…

The extent to which "it matters" is subjective, I guess. I'm now the parent of a 2-year-old toddler and we didn't track any of that, we just were on the look for obvious signs of alarm but if everything looked normal we didn't count any of those variables. Everything went fine.

In fact, we almost had a problem due to "too much data tracking": in the first weeks, there was a point in which the baby hadn't gained weight for a week so the pediatrician suggested to give up exclusive breastfeeding and give him some formula to complement it. After some thought, we decided against it: we were quite aware of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding, saw that the baby was otherwise looking and behaving fine, thought that the data on such short term maybe would not be significant, and gave him another week without changing anything. Next week, the baby was growing just fine, and he was exclusively breastfed until 6 months.

That said, if there's something I have learned as a parent is not to judge other parents, because no one knows what the right style of parenting is (and even when we know that option X is better than option Y, real life often makes it impossible to implement). So if data tracking apps work for some parents, more power to them, of course.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#25
post #15

Validates 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…

This kinda shows the problem with self-hosting though. Expectant parents just want an app they can directly use. Even something as simple as Heroku is outside the tech skills of 95% of parents.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#26
post #3

I have been worried about health-related data that can be exfiltrated by smart devices such as scales, watches (...) so I simply refuse to use any app that's not opensource. There is a solution for some (ex: my Xiaomi bluetooth scale) but not others. However, should I install even one such app, I do not trust it will avoid listening to the BLE broadcast of data coming from other devices, and send it home. Recently, t…

Your post reminds me of how ironic it is that despite the amazing wealth of software that exists today day, if your use case involves any expectation of privacy you generally can't find anything that fits your needs.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#28
post #25
post #15

Validates 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…

This kinda shows the problem with self-hosting though. Expectant parents just want an app they can directly use. Even something as simple as Heroku is outside the tech skills of 95% of parents.

Yeah, I wouldn’t bother suggesting it outside of some place like HN.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#29

One solution to this is legally enforceable, personal ownership of ones data. Distributed machine learning makes it possible to proffer data for insights without necessarily sharing it off-device. And unlocking some functionality in exchange. I'm sure more elaborate patterns of exchanges are possible. Is anyone working on this?

The GDPR does this, but it's pretty ineffective. I'm tracked just as much as before, but now they tell me first. Opting out is difficult at best, and often simply impossible.

Re: When tracking your period lets companies track you

#30
post #2

Is 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'…

> Is there a transcript? Not a fan of audio or video forms of information, far easier to read.

If you're in the EU it'll show you a GDPR choice then refer you to the text-only article if you decline:

https://text.npr.org/1068930998

(have to say, of all the news sources NPR handles this the best)

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