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How Period-Tracking Apps and Data Privacy Fit into a Post-Roe v. Wade Climate

In the wake of the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, privacy experts are increasingly concerned about how data collected from period-tracking apps, among other applications, could potentially be used to penalize anyone seeking or considering an abortion.

Millions of people use apps to help track their menstrual cycles. Flo, which bills itself as the most popular period and cycle tracking app, has amassed 43 million active users. Another app, Clue, claims 12 million monthly active users.

The personal health data stored in these apps is among the most intimate types of information a person can share. And it can also be telling. The apps can show when their period stops and starts and when a pregnancy stops and starts.

That has privacy experts on edge, because if abortion is ever criminalized, this data — whether subpoenaed or sold to a third party — could be used to suggest that someone has had or is considering an abortion.

At least 26 states are “certain or likely” to ban abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

But some states have signaled an interest to go further. Two days after the leaked Supreme Court opinion was first reported by Politico, lawmakers in Louisiana advanced a bill that would classify abortion as a homicide.

It’s more than just period apps
Apps aren't the only ways technology can be used to connect someone to an abortion. If someone is sitting in the waiting room of a clinic that offers abortion services and is playing a game on their phone, that app might be collecting location data.

Any app that is collecting sensitive information about your health or your body should be given an additional level of scrutiny.

Search histories could also be identifying, says Brown. Activist groups — regardless of what they’re advocating for — might try to purchase a dataset that would show where people have been searching for information related to abortion.

Full story:
[npr.org]