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Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

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Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#221

Post by NoTranslationL »

bryanhogan wrote: post #213
NoTranslationL wrote: post #23

If anyone is interested in a privacy focused tracking app that stores all your data locally, I make an app called Reflect [0] whose sole purpose is this, plus on-device analysis. We’re working on a menstrual tracking feature right now and it’s pretty far along. We’ve just released an anomaly detection feature as well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

That looks very interesting. I'm building almost the same actually: http://dailyselftrack.com/ Any reason your app is iOS only?

Reflect started as a passion project for myself and my partner with no intention to make a product out of it. By the time we thought to do so, we’d already put so much into just iOS that doing an Android version as well was its own huge project.

We still plan to implement Android, we have a roadmap where we track this: https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-version-o...

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#222

Post by wferrell »

bryanhogan wrote: post #213
NoTranslationL wrote: post #23

If anyone is interested in a privacy focused tracking app that stores all your data locally, I make an app called Reflect [0] whose sole purpose is this, plus on-device analysis. We’re working on a menstrual tracking feature right now and it’s pretty far along. We’ve just released an anomaly detection feature as well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

That looks very interesting. I'm building almost the same actually: http://dailyselftrack.com/ Any reason your app is iOS only?

Are you going to have it be local only?

I think you would be interested in seeing what Flo has done using OHTTP: https://oblivious.network/ohttp

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#223

Post by footy »

olalonde wrote: post #88
nemomarx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your period stops long enough to suggest a pregnancy, and then resumes without giving birth on record, that's enough evidence that you might have terminated the pregnancy. This can be correlated with travel records to find that you used a clinic out of state, which is a crime in some jurisdictions.

I find it hard to believe this would qualify as "enough evidence" in any court of law. A straightforward defense could be that you simply stopped tracking for unrelated reasons. Also, are there really criminal penalties for receiving an abortion? From what I’ve read, the criminal penalties are reserved for those who perform or facilitate them.

you don't even need to actually seek an abortion, and it's been going on for years. There are many reports, e.g. in the BBC[1], this personal story on CNN [2], this woman who had a miscarriage while using drugs and got four years [3], this PBS article about how the risk of miscarriage being criminalized is increasing [4]... etc.

As a person outside the United States, America appears to me like a very dangerous place to be pregnant in, and what's even wilder is that people (men?) appear largely unaware of it. Regardless of whether you think it's right to convict an addict for a miscarriage or to convict a woman for seeking an abortion or for having a spontaneous one, these are all examples of the environment in which having menstrual data fall into the wrong hands could bring about significant harm. Your proposed defence reads wildly naive and woefully inadequate to me given all this.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544 [2] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/health/south-carolina-abortio... [3] https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/577876-okl... [4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-increasing-risk-of-cri...

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#225

Post by argomo »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #82
XorNot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duress modes are a frequently overlooked feature in general - e.g. I don't want to just block access to my location, I want to lie about my location entirely.

I also would like “give an incorrect location” as an option. Something like that would probably never be supported by Google or Apple officially, because unlike some other privacy features, it’s actively and overtly hostile to advertisers.

Not just location, but all privacy sensitive API's. The OS should have built in support for segregating location, contacts, calendars, storage, etc. (GrapheneOS does this quite well with storage scopes). As part of this segregation you should be able to redirect the API to a custom implementation.

Thus, my transit app would have access to my real location while Amazon thinks I'm still at home and Pokemon Go thinks I'm on an around-the-works trip to collect location specific items.

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#226

Post by dragonwriter »

olalonde wrote: post #88
nemomarx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your period stops long enough to suggest a pregnancy, and then resumes without giving birth on record, that's enough evidence that you might have terminated the pregnancy. This can be correlated with travel records to find that you used a clinic out of state, which is a crime in some jurisdictions.

I find it hard to believe this would qualify as "enough evidence" in any court of law. A straightforward defense could be that you simply stopped tracking for unrelated reasons. Also, are there really criminal penalties for receiving an abortion? From what I’ve read, the criminal penalties are reserved for those who perform or facilitate them.

> I find it hard to believe this would qualify as "enough evidence" in any court of law.

It doesn't have to be enough evidence to convict alone to be enough to be a vector of substantial adverse impact.

Criminal justice involvement short of conviction can have adverse, even fatal, consequences.

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#227

Post by NoTranslationL »

hamburglar wrote: post #212
NoTranslationL wrote: post #23

If anyone is interested in a privacy focused tracking app that stores all your data locally, I make an app called Reflect [0] whose sole purpose is this, plus on-device analysis. We’re working on a menstrual tracking feature right now and it’s pretty far along. We’ve just released an anomaly detection feature as well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

This looked promising, but the first two things I tried to record with it seemed just outside of its capabilities. I track blood pressure daily, but it didn’t seem to have a way to record a metric that has two numbers. In addition, I record the sodium and potassium values of everything I eat, and I want a way to record the name of the food item along with those two values (preferably providing a dropdown for previous…

Yeah, there is no support for “multi-dimensional” metrics. So systolic and diastolic would each have to be their own metric. Food tracking in Reflect could use some work, but if you link with Apple Health, Reflect can pull data from Cronometer or MyFitnessPal for example.

Any particular place you thought the premium was very aggressive? I’m open to changing that, it’s not the kind of feedback we normally get. Thanks for saying so

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#228

Post by freejazz »

mstridder1 wrote: post #215
freejazz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a strawman. You said "mysterious circumstances" when we are talking about miscarriages. Do you think they are the same or not? It's a very simple question. >Do you not want police to investigate reports of someone disposing of human remains in a dumpster? What does this have to do with a miscarriage????

[flagged]

> Obviously nobody's being investigated for routine miscarriages.

Sorry, how does a third party know the miscarriage was "routine?" What is a non-routine miscarriage? Why would it be criminal, it's still a miscarriage? What's the suspicion?

The article you refer to, the investigation happened, not because there was a miscarriage, but because a body was seen being dumped...

Maybe it was the mistake of the other poster for sharing that link, but I do not see what it has to do with your point at all. Either miscarriages are illegal or not... you said they should be investigated when they are "mysterious circumstances" and I am repeatedly asking you to explain when a miscarriage is a mysterious circumstance? Even more so, when is it such that it has any relevancy to this discussion about the state tracking a woman's pregnancy through digital data.

>Oh, check out the links that started this discussion. tldr- A woman was seen disposing of a baby's body in a dumpster, prompting an investigation. She was ultimately cleared as it was indeed a miscarriage.

What about all the other incidents in the other article besides the one you decided to talk about because you are not willing to state whether or not you think a miscarriage is a "mysterious circumstance?" Which seems like a very straightforward question and I do not understand your unwillingness to provide a response when your previous posts make it very unclear as to whether or not you think a miscarriage is a normal occurrence.

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#229

Post by giraffe_lady »

duxup wrote: post #172
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A state like Texas being able to track a woman’s period means they will know when she becomes pregnant or ceases to be pregnant. That’s potential evidence of a felony in Texas. You connect the dots from there.

I don't buy into the idea that ANY possible evidence is a legitimate risk for being prosecuted when it would take a GREAT deal more than that to get to that point. Would flight info, rental car data, etc also contribute? Emails saved ...

A great deal more like for example a private cause of action bounty program and a clear & established commitment to using technological surveillance to pursue and punish people who have had abortions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Heartbeat_Act

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/te...

Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety

#230

Post by NoTranslationL »

wferrell wrote: post #220
NoTranslationL wrote: post #23

If anyone is interested in a privacy focused tracking app that stores all your data locally, I make an app called Reflect [0] whose sole purpose is this, plus on-device analysis. We’re working on a menstrual tracking feature right now and it’s pretty far along. We’ve just released an anomaly detection feature as well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...

Are you using OHTTP? If there are cloud aspects - I think you would want to. Learn more: https://oblivious.network/ohttp

No, because we don’t have any servers. We don’t track anything about our users, not even logs or usage.
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