周期跟踪应用程序正在共享您的健康数据吗？

期间跟踪的概念（监控身体变化以确定您在每月生殖周期中的位置），可以帮助月经更具预测性，更麻烦。如果您使用period tracking app，机会非常好，它比您一生中的大多数人都更了解您。迅速发展的Femtech行业促进了应用程序的快速崛起Flo,生活,槽,线索， 和前夕， 和fitness trackercompanies like Fitbit and Garmin have updated their companion apps to include period tracking. Prior to the growth of apps, people tracked periods on paper calendars and diaries, so the idea isn’t new. What is: How that private health information gets commodified. Having an app that knows you inside and out could come at a cost.

Using an app, by its very nature, can involve divulging information to the company that runs the technology. With period tracking apps, that information can be highly private and very sensitive. The apps vary slightly, but almost always ask users for their birthdate, weight, height, and whether or not they had a period, exercised, dealt with a breakout, were in a good or bad mood, or had sex on each day. This is all potentially of high value to advertisers—and period tracking app companies know this.

What are tracking apps doing with my data?

As history shows, a whole lot. In 2019,The Wall Street Journalreported that the Flo app, along with several other health-related apps, had been sharing user data with Facebook. The data was then matched to actual profiles and used for Facebook’s ad targeting services. Flo’s developers initially claimed they had never sent data to third parties in the first place, then, after the article came out,保证停止与Facebook共享数据.

Period app data has also been shared with users’ places of employment. Another app, Ovia, has beenouted for sharing user data一些工作场所。个人users’ data was anonymized and aggregated, but the app’s 6,000-word terms of use gave the app “royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license, throughout the universe” to “utilize and exploit” their health data.

在共享信息方面，周期应用程序几乎没有不同的信息。对于大多数应用程序，当您打勾“我同意”框时，可能很难分享您同意分享的内容；无数其他应用程序和网站，包括Facebook,ADA和词典（疾病症状指南和药物身份识别应用程序分别为忽略用户隐私而受到抨击。但是，如果暴露出来，则进入时期跟踪应用程序的亲密数据可能会产生不同的可怕后果。

韦伯斯特大学哲学教授布鲁斯·乌姆博（Bruce Umbaugh）告诉《评论》，韦伯斯特大学的哲学教授布鲁斯·乌姆博（Bruce Umbaugh）告诉《评论》，他说：“在许多情况下，即使用户被取消识别，也有可能弄清楚谁是谁。”换句话说，正如周期应用程序用户数据可以与Facebook配置文件匹配一样，它也可以与个人员工（具有更大的现实世界的含义）连接。

Why does it matter if this information gets shared?

最高法院推翻后Roe诉Wade，许多以电子方式跟踪周期的人关心他们的数据最终出现在错误的手中，尤其是那些生活在13个州之一的人中trigger laws，例如德克萨斯州或阿肯色州，可能是起诉，罚款或入狱堕胎。尽管每个法律的细节因州而有所不同，但通常只能针对威胁生命的怀孕或强奸或乱伦的患者进行例外，即使这样，患者也会受到额外的创伤和审查。

Since 2019, manyperiod apps已承诺停止向第三方出售个人信息。但是，许多应用程序仍然有权共享您的信息以遵守法律或执法。这意味着，如果您的期间应用程序的隐私政策规定他们可以与执法部门共享您的信息，则可以与这些第三方合法共享您的个人期间数据。

许多公司正在寻找新的方法来纪念用户的隐私前进。鉴于Roe诉Wade的逆转，Floperiod tracking app已经引入了一个名为“匿名模式”的功能，该功能使您可以从帐户中删除您的个人身份（包括姓名和电子邮件地址）。简而言之，这意味着电子邮件和名称不能链接到个人，在使用时使您（和您的健康数据）无法识别。

While this should be a rightful cause for concern and relief to anyone looking to keep their data safe from the prying eyes of the law, you might not want your personal data shared with your employer or insurance provider. Most workplaces would likely say they don’t have malicious intent for gathering intel on their employees’ period and pregnancy data. Ovia claims the information they give companies helps them minimize healthcare costs and provide better benefits for their employees. And, indeed, data such as the average time it takes for employees to get pregnant, the percentage with high-risk pregnancies, how they gave birth, and their timeline for returning to work could inform what benefits may best serve them. Still, it’s extraordinarily private information that employees themselves may not ever have intentionally shared.

此外，一个简单的事实是，并不是每个怀孕的人都怀孕。这可能是由于流产，发生在至少10％至15％的怀孕in their first twelve weeks, or termination (195 cases per 1,000 live births in the United States in 2019, according to the疾病预防控制中心）。因此，对于那些认为自己的跟踪应用程序是一种私人日记或AI Considante的人来说，对此类信息的传播可能会特别令人不安，这就是跟踪应用程序出现的时期。

“Under the guise of giving women greater control over their health and well-being, these apps [may] exploit women by commodifying intimate and personal information about them,” Umbaugh said. “Rather than empowering women, these apps can facilitate manipulating them or discriminating against them.”

如何将我的个人数据保密？

如果您想将周期信息锁定，最好的选择就是用笔和纸跟踪老式的方式。但是，如果您喜欢应用程序的便利性（和电子提醒），请尝试使用具有明确隐私政策的应用程序。以德国为基础线索遵守世界上最严格的隐私法，European GDPR; another app,Natural Cycle遵守类似协议，目前在其网站上指出，他们正在努力加密数据，以获得更安全，更私人的用户体验。

Regardless of which app you use, it pays to read privacy policies carefully to learn what else apps might do with your data. Staying informed about internet privacy in general through advocacy sites likeCoding Rightsand the电子边界基础根据Umbaugh的说法，是一个很好的起点。对于任何应用程序，请确定即使删除信息，如何以及是否与第三方共享数据以及是否继续存储您的信息，以及将数据与真实世界的身份连接起来可能是多么容易。

Umbaugh说，理想的应用程序不需要用户创建帐户，允许用户控制其隐私设置，并将其当地存储在您的手机上，而不是在云上的服务器上存储。（线索，点，生命和凹槽，允许个人在没有官方帐户的情况下使用该应用程序。）

Most importantly, in terms of security and your health, pay attention to changes in the app, both in terms of its privacy policy and how using it makes you feel. Things are rarely ever the same from one day to the next on the internet, which, if you think about it, tends to be the case with human bodies, too. And, who knows? Maybe the right app can help provide you with better control of both.

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