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

cam.ac.uk

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

#431

Post by Aeolun »

anigbrowl wrote: post #422
Aeolun wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying it should be shared. I’m just struggling to come up with truly terrifying things you can do with the information. That whole article is going mental over the fact that a cop can run a nationwide search on license plates of all things? What’d be the point of running it on a select few states? “I’ve established that the suspect is not in Texas.”

If you have misunderstood the article so badly, perhaps you should ask someone to sit down and explain to you what it's actually about.

I… did?

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

#432

Post by Anthony-G »

90s_dev wrote: post #371
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies kill projects much more frequently than others.

https://killedbygoogle.com/ vs https://killedbymozilla.com/ Yet Mozilla has the stigma here?

I suspect that this could be due to “immediacy effect” or “availability heuristic”. Mozilla’s announcement that they are shutting down Pocket and Fakespot was only three weeks ago and was big news. On the other hand, Google shut down so many services that it’s not a rare or memorable issue – unless you were personally impacted by the shutdown.

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

#433

Post by ubermonkey »

beAbU wrote: post #106
1970-01-01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk profile of paper seems to be equal to the risk profile of on-device-only? How do they differ? Something you have v. something you have

The argument is that normies can't differentiate between apps that are really safe (i.e. on-device processing + data) versus apps that merely say they are safe, nor do they have the tools/knowledge to verify these claims. It's safer then to recommend to stay away from apps entirely, and rather use paper, for as long as you have that piece of paper, your data is private and safe.

Exactly.

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

#434

Post by ubermonkey »

testing22321 wrote: post #67
ubermonkey wrote: post #56

In the current climate, no one should use a menstrual tracking app of any kind, even those with on-device-only data. Asking normal people to figure out the risk profile of that data, and to evaluate the trustworthiness of a given app, is just too much. Use a paper calendar.

Even people in Canada? New Zealand? Many billions of people live completely free of this concern.

Do they, though?

Illiberal ideas can take root anywhere. Yes, the concern is primarily for those in countries actively backsliding on liberties, but...

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

#435

Post by OtherShrezzing »

areyourllySorry wrote: post #421
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This theme of anecdote has been trotted out for more than a half century. In the 80’s the yarn was that a supermarket could tell when a woman was pregnant before her doctor from her purchase patterns alone. To this date, no supermarket has ever produced this result - or any thematically similar.

target

Target’s able to confidently estimate that a woman is pregnant from 20 weeks from their purchase history, if they’d purchased pregnancy tests. A doctor can tell you 70+ days earlier.

They’d probably have an equivalent outcome if they just looked at cctv footage and guessed based on weight gain.

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

#436

Post by carstenhag »

radicalbyte wrote: post #352
carstenhag wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I had failed finding an app that was not ad-ridden or oldish, my girlfriend and I are using this (I am copying her values, to know when her period will be). Also contributing some code :)

Can I ask why you use it? We used test strips - they're really cheap and way more accurate as women's bodies aren't clocks. That was effective for getting pregnant. Using anything except some kind of active measures to avoid pregnancy doesn't pass my engineer brain and certainly doesn't pass my wife's Pharmacologist brain (i.e. she actually knows what she's talking about whereas I'm using applied probability theory w…

What test strips are you using? It's the first time I am hearing about that, I guess it's not common in Germany.

I/we track it, mostly because she is a bit clumsy and forgets when her last period was & when the next one is. So not for ovulation tracking at all. Once she told me she thought she was pregnant because her period still was not there; I checked chats & the app and could confirm her period was still two weeks away :).

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

#437

Post by sigmoid10 »

lesuorac wrote: post #35
sigmoid10 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that stuff like privacy and open source don't attract the vast sums of venture capital that ad-selling businesses do. Sure, an average dev could probably build a working app like that - but could you ship the same quality as someone who can afford to hire an entire UX team?

imo, the real problem is that you need to consistently ship. It you made a one-off app then it's going to get de-listed for not being updated despite not needing an update.

With how fast OS changes happen these day and features get added or deprecated, an app not needing updates no longer exists. Even if you design something for iOS 18 or Android 16 today, there's a very high chance it won't even run on modern phones anymore in a few years.

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

#438

Post by therealdrag0 »

wand3r wrote: post #275

While unlikely, I personally believe that advertising revenue should be taxed at 50%. This would do a lot to align industry incentives. Advertising revenue would be looked at less as a free cash stream that can be bolted on everywhere. In this case, maybe the app could be monetized directly instead of whatever the fuck is happening now.

A progressive tax by company size might make sense and be more marketable (heh). Advertising is very important for new/small businesses, but no one needs to be told about incumbents like Coca-Cola or Johnson and Johnson. Privileging market entrants can be sold as pro-market and anti-monopolist.
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