Experts have warned that women who use period tracking applications face “real and terrifying security and privacy risks.”
The academics of the University of Cambridge have said that personal information within the application can be collected and “sell on scale.”
A new report from the Minderoo Center for Technology and Democracy in Cambridge declared that this raises risks and damage to users.
Researchers have said that menstrual data can provide information on the health of people and their reproductive choices.
Applications can collect information about exercise, diet, medications, sexual preferences, hormonal levels and contraception use.
The report authors added that this information can be a “gold mine” for the consumer profile.
Many women who download applications do so when they try to get pregnant, what the authors point out leads to a dramatic change in purchase behavior.
“The data about who is pregnant and who wants to be, therefore, have become more sought after information in digital advertising,” they said.
The point of how the monitoring applications have increased rapidly in popularity, with global discharges of the three most popular applications that exceed 250 million.
“Cycle monitoring applications (CTA) are a lucrative business because they provide companies behind the applications access to extremely valuable and fine -grain user data,” experts wrote in their new report.
“CTA data are not only commercially valuable and are shared with an inextricable network if third parties (therefore, which makes the user's intimate information exploitable for directed advertising), but also raises serious safety risks for users.”
They point out that in the wrong hands, the data collected by the applications could lead to the “discrimination” of health insurance; Risks to labor perspectives or even domestic abuse.
The research team requested a better government of the “Femtech” industry, including the safety of the improved data of these applications and to enter “significant consent options.”
They also requested public health agencies to launch alternatives to commercial monitoring applications.
“The monitoring applications of the menstrual cycle are presented as empowering women and addressing the gender health gap,” said Dr. Stefanie Felsberger, the main author of the report.
“However, the business model behind its services is based on commercial use, selling user data and information to profit for profit.”
“There are real and terrifying security and privacy risks for women as a result of the commercialization of data collected by cycle monitoring applications.”
Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Cambridge Center, added: “The use of cycles monitoring applications is at its highest point.
“Women deserve something better than to make their menstrual follow -up data deal with consumption data, but there is a different possible future.”
