The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker • Hacker News Board

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#61

Post by guilhas » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

On the other hand

Why are so many women saying their periods are suddenly late or irregular? Experts explain https://dailynews.co.za/lifestyle/health/2026-07-14-why-are-...

Your menstrual cycle may affect how well vaccines work https://www.newscientist.com/article/2532245-your-menstrual-...

COVID-19 vaccine 'disrupted the periods of thousands of women' - but changes 'short-lived' https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-disrupted-the-pe...

I always use open source apps, but at the same time I wonder how can my we all benefit from each other data respectfully of privacy, health or otherwise

And anyway the data that the other 50 apps are collecting on most people phones can be used to infer most of this. Your locations, what you bought recently, what you searched online, which sites have you been, what you asked your chat bot, what you liked or viewed in social media...

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#62

Post by mishellaneous » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

drdexebtjl wrote: post #60

quadrifoliate wrote: post #32

I'm male, and clearly don't know enough about this--are there any benefits for the user that a period tracking app can provide by reaching out to the cloud? I guess backing up your data is an obvious one. I thought entering the information is like 90% of the tracking, everything else is mostly calculation/averaging and none of it needs to live on a server. The Euki app seems like my idea of what it would always be.

Sharing with your partner is a big one. Whether you’re trying to have a baby, buying her snacks, or planning beach/pool activities together, it’s very useful.

> Sharing with your partner is a big one.

how is that even 10% more convenient than simply speaking? nevermind being worth giving away private data.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#63

Post by jMyles » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #59

makeitdouble wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, backing up is the most obvious reason to have it live on a server from the user POV. And of course the app vendor will want more lockin and be able to keep the data hostage. Paying for apps doesn't help as much as expected, as they'll want to keep the revenue stream alive. Solving this conundrum would require to deal with both side of the coin. The real solution to this would be to give everyone and their dog a…

> The real solution to this would be to give everyone and their dog a standardised online server with legally enforced privacy, and have sandboxed apps manage data in and out in a interexchangeable format, but I feel like I'm asking for peace on earth. That sounds like Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_pr...

> I feel like I'm asking for peace on earth.

FWIW, this is not an unreasonable ask either.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#64

Post by throwway120385 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 1:28 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #14

Whenever this issue comes up I feel the need to relay a story about a meeting with a databroker in 1998 who was tracking menstrual cycles using purchasing records of a wide variety of consumer goods. They will track you to optimize their manipulative, targeted advertising whether you have an invasive app or not.

What's different is that the period tracker apps have women provide that information pretty directly. The data broker probably had to do a lot of work and then estimate with a confidence level. So there's a significant difference in level of effort there, and then because of the estimate the data becomes much less valuable because it's only plausible it's not certain.

This argument gets trotted out whenever people talk about privacy and protection of personal information. I hear it when people discuss LPR systems, cameras, and the like too.

These data-gathering applications of technology should be treated specially because they make it extremely easy to gather high-confidence data about individuals. I bet your data broker couldn't predict when someone was ovulating or whether they were pregnant or count how many miscarriages they had just based on purchase history? This is all data that period tracker apps capture pretty directly. The miscarriages one is particularly bad because that data could be misconstrued as abortion and in US states where that's illegal it could get you into real trouble. There's a small but vocal subset of the population that seems to want to punish women for anything other than a healthy delivery. But when my spouse and I were trying everyone we talked to had at least one if not more miscarriage stories.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#65

Post by wpm » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

soumyadeb wrote: post #31

benoau wrote: post #28

This is the second time [1] that analytics in period apps have been problematic, and also follows the recent hack of MixPanel [2] exposing OpenAI usage data. Seems like 3rd-party analytics are becoming a new frontier for security issues. [1] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-09-03/met... [2] https://openai.com/index/mixpanel-incident/

That one was a security incident—data that had been legitimately collected by an analytics provider was exposed due to a breach. This one is about privacy — what data an app chooses to collect and which third parties it intentionally sends that data to. The concern isn't that someone hacked those companies. The distinction is important for us. Disclaimer: RudderStack founder.

The word "legitimate" is doing some work there

If they can't keep it safe they have no legitimate interest having the data

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#66

Post by berofeev » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #32

I'm male, and clearly don't know enough about this--are there any benefits for the user that a period tracking app can provide by reaching out to the cloud? I guess backing up your data is an obvious one. I thought entering the information is like 90% of the tracking, everything else is mostly calculation/averaging and none of it needs to live on a server. The Euki app seems like my idea of what it would always be.

I (a male) use it to have my partner's menstrual cycle on my own phone.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#67

Post by fsflover » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #46

I would never trust any private health data to an app. I don't care what promises or claims they make. The technology is fundamentally untrustable, and even if a vendor is doing the right thing today, they (or any intermediary) could change tomorrow.

> I would never trust any private health data to an app. I don't care what promises or claims they make.

If the app is free software, then you don't need to trust; you can verify instead. See: apps on F-Droid.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#68

Post by like_any_other » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

Ctrl+F "open source", "free software": 0 results

In contrast with the (single) mention of open-source on Mozilla's website that the BBC article cites: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-personal/period...

These articles are always so vague, never explaining the difference between proprietary and free software, and even treating sending data to company servers as some kind of acceptable default, only raising privacy alarms when the data is also sent (directly) to some 3rd party server. As if that makes any difference once the company has your data - they can sell it to whoever themselves.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#69

Post by SoftTalker » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #48

SoftTalker wrote: post #46

I would never trust any private health data to an app. I don't care what promises or claims they make. The technology is fundamentally untrustable, and even if a vendor is doing the right thing today, they (or any intermediary) could change tomorrow.

> even if a vendor is doing the right thing today, ... they could fail to realize that they were hacked last year. Sadly, the same issues apply to the copies of your private health data in your doctor's computer, your insurance company's computer, your hospital's computer, your pharmacy's computer, etc. Avoiding the app reduces the attack surface. With the minor moral victory of not having gone out of your way to mak…

I avoid the medical establishment as much as I can, partly for this reason.

Re: The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

#70

Post by drdexebtjl » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

mishellaneous wrote: post #62

drdexebtjl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing with your partner is a big one. Whether you’re trying to have a baby, buying her snacks, or planning beach/pool activities together, it’s very useful.

> Sharing with your partner is a big one. how is that even 10% more convenient than simply speaking? nevermind being worth giving away private data.

It just is? I used to get notifications that said something like “$partner is likely to be irritable for the next 2 days”, so I could be extra careful not to piss her off.

No way you can get someone to tell you that unprompted.

Now, of course I would prefer if that data was end-to-end encrypted.