Period tracking app, Flo, found to be selling user data to Meta
femtechdesigndesk.substack.comIf the app could make another $0.05 selling your location to kidnapping gangs, they'd do it. There's no such thing as an app that cares about your privacy or your interests.
There is such a thing. FOSS.
Unfortunately, companies like Apple (and soon Google as well) are making this unnecessarily hard in their phone ecosystems.
They'd only do it as long as the risk of getting caught and the punishment when caught made it worth it.
If the authorities that are supposed to enforce GDPR (and other data protection laws around the world) were doing their job, app makers would be a lot more careful with what they embed and what data they send where. Because these authorities don't seem to have been doing anything useful, it's now so normalized that you could probably send a $20M fine to every major app and be right about it.
I don’t have the right configuration of equipment to use an app like this, but does anyone know why this needs to be a service-driven app? What piece of functionality requires a server to track your health?
The spying part requires a server.
If you use GrapheneOS, you can enable or disable internet access for each app.
"If you use GrapheneOS, you can enable or disable internet access for each app."
This can also be done on Android with certain apps such as Netguard and PCAPDroid
(Using either a blacklist or whitelist approach)
Disabling internet access is not necessarily a hard requirement to stop this type of spying
Controlling what DNS data apps can access, if any, will usually suffice
Motorola needs to hurry up and release their GrapheneOS devices, I need a new phone soon(TM) (next year or two) and I refuse to give google money to buy hardware to avoid Google.
> If you use GrapheneOS, you can enable or disable internet access for each app.
Not sure what information you're expecting the app in question to surface if you disable internet access for it.
An error? It's useful to know if/when an app wants to access the Internet. So if an app says it's local only you can disable network permissions. Trust but verify.
Locally stored info
geo-positioning, maps, way-finding, directions, time of day, calendar, lunar cycle, calculator, notes, language translation, calculator, games, contacts, etc.
I'm not familiar with this app, but a service lets you do potentially nice things like cross device sync and sharing observations with trusted others.
I'm assuming the question should be further refined to "why does the service need to know the data". The things that you mention could be done with the service only having the encrypted blob.
Encryption is more work than not-encryption, and most software is optimally lazy and barely functional. The main goal of the developers is to make the app almost work most of the time, and not crash too much or be so inconvenient that users delete it. Anything past that is extra, and businesses don't pay for extra.
Better revenue model? Pushing some data to the server, serving ads to the app, reselling demographic data, etc all allow for more revenue than just the price of installation.
There are almost certainly other apps in the space that don’t need a server, don’t phone home to Meta, and are lower priced, but they probably aren’t as good at marketing.
From my experience in the startup world, I would wager that this developer probably wanted to track marketing campaign installs (Meta library is required to close the loop on Facebook/Instagram ad conversions after app install) or wanted a feature from some Meta library they integrated but didn’t realize or care about the consequences.
From an user perspective, easier data sync and access between devices
My partner uses the app this article is about (Flo) and I have an account there too in order for her to share the data with me.
I guess you could do it with some sort of P2P sync with cryptography involved locally instead, and/or E2E for stuff sent via the servers. Kind of surprised me they didn't have E2E already, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.
Well... They share their data with you and a bunch of adtech companies...
Or, you know, she could just track it without any app at all and share it with you in person.
You could also be snarky without internet access
Computers are useful tools that do useful things for people. It is reasonable for people to want to use them to do things they find useful. They don't have to function like spy devices, but we've chosen to highly reward the people who have turned them into spy devices, so they do. We could choose to do something else with them instead. For example we could pass & enforce privacy regulations so they cannot function as spy devices. Or we could wheel out the guillotines so there are appropriate consequences for the creeps and sociopaths who choose to build and work at places like Facebook. Whichever, I'm flexible.
Same as any other application, if you lose or change your phone you don't lose data.
Like notes apps, reminder apps, etc, data from almost everything we do on phone is saved in cloud. That data is their business fundamental. Same with this app also.
Not being a women, I've always wondered what insight the app gives regardless of data traveling to a server... does it do anything you can't do with a simple notebook app (like Apple's default Notes)?
If you have an irregular period, does this app help "guess" when it's going to start/end?
If you have a regular period, why do you need an app at all?
I wonder if you would ask the same thing about any number of apps - like fitness trackers, mood trackers, supplement trackers, online diary apps, task trackers, etc? You don't even need a notes app - you could just carry a notebook around or email notes to yourself.
As for why people may want to track menstrual cycles specifically, it is because bodies can be greatly influenced by what phase of the menstrual cycle we are in. From regular physical and mood changes to disorders like PMDD. The different parts of the cycle can also impact ideal exercise and even food choices for some. There are women and couples who gain insights (and often useful predictions) into how their moods coincide with menstrual phases, and that is much easier to track in a dedicated app designed to do so (which can also flag cycle irregularities, bleeding variation, or other changes), just as with other purpose-built applications. All of that is before we even get to the whole fertility tracking thing. One such app is a certified birth control method in my country. Tracking periods in a notes app is not.
> fertility tracking
This. Life is busy and some people just want an app to tell them when they're ovulating.
Like most data entry software there’s nothing that unstructured notes (or paper) can’t handle.
The main useful feature of the apps (or Apple Health’s tracker which is entirely adequate) is that it sends reminders on the estimated period start date, and then a few days afterwards if you haven’t recorded the end date.
Even “regular” periods often aren’t perfectly regular, or can become irregular when they were regular. (Which is often very important health information.)
It also automatically calculates median period length and typical variation/range.
All unnecessary for some people but very useful for others.
> median period length and typical variation/range.
This was what my partner found useful to share with her doctor while trying to figure out a medical issue. Of course it could have been done typing dates and notes into excel, and manually creating charts, but the chance that she (or most people) would consistently follow that workflow (pun not intended, but I like it) is nil.
It doesn’t? You could easily install the tracker on the client app, no need to do it server side. In fact I bet the app in question (Flo) was doing the upload to Meta client-side.
> It doesn’t?
I'm guessing P2P technology isn't really sufficiently easy for developers yet, so when you have two users using an app that are supposed to share something between the two, most of us default to building server-side services. That + the "dynamic" list of articles and "help" Flo offer I'm guessing is the main reason for them having servers in the first place.
I have actually been playing around with scoping a privacy first version of these tracking apps that store all the data locally with optional sync. It's technically possible, but there's very little in the way of revenue generation there. So it's same issue as always, capitalism corrupts.
The blockchain should have solved this.
The app in question couldn't be bothered to do E2EE, and your solution is a public, immutable database?
Haven't we known this for years? There's been thorough documentation of the violation of privacy in period tracking apps as far back as 2021. It's even been written about when it comes to Meta. Meta ‘eavesdropping’ on Flo exposes how period apps are a data… | TBIJ https://share.google/qYTopS5goSKE0Dyna
I don't really give a shit at this point. In Toronto it's legal to even record into your condo neighbor's unit 24/7 and livestream your recording to the Internet, unbeknownst to the inhabitants. It has been demonstrated that nobody will enforce anything.
At this point I am a privacy nihilist, and I expect all information about anyone to be exploited all the time. Everyone should do the same.
I live in America so I can’t speak to Canadian laws, but what you’re describing is the same in the States. If you are in public, or can be seen by someone who is in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It’s how paparazzi work.
Does that include putting your ear to your neighbor's wall and recording into their private dwelling?
No idea, I’m only speaking to photography
[drip.](https://bloodyhealth.gitlab.io/) [source](https://gitlab.com/bloodyhealth/drip)
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I think the biggest thing I'd like to see is a data format standard defined. You should be able to "take your data with you" and go anywhere you like. If you decide an app is unethical or if your favorite OSS app stops being updated, it should be simple to switch. Many apps let you export your data. Maybe someone can make a converter between popular proprietary apps and a common data structure spec
"Flo, through the Flo App, unlawfully shared users’ sensitive health data – including menstrual cycle, ovulation, and pregnancy-related information – with third parties such as Meta, Google, and Flurry for their own commercial us"
If the app sold the data to Meta through extremely automated Meta platforms. Doesn't the bulk of legal liability and social backlash lie on the app instead of on Meta?
Like sure if a company is caught buying stolen goods, maybe they could tighten up due diligence, but the actual thief is the main culprit.
Meta only cares about ad revenue so could they be researching or have discovered a link between buying trends and links to a woman's cycle?
Are you joking? There's loads of trivial links. Most obviously: it's stopped (pregnancy, menopause) and therefore so too will stop purchases of certain 'female hygiene products'.
a very old story - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
Privacyguides has some recs for private health apps (https://www.privacyguides.org/en/health-and-wellness/#menstr...)
Yikes - selling "When did I last Orgasm" to Mark Zuckerberg's team seems like an undesirable "leak" of information.
.. To be clear, "wired app to standard ad-tech surveillance plumbing, sending concepts like user logged period and pregnancy mode entered, through its pipes, to improve ad revenues through Meta's targeting platform" .. ad-events .. this is the kind of behavior that happened, in plain-ish speaking terms, per what I read in my non-expert capacity.
Q: (answered) Now I want to know who runs (ran?) Flo - can we find their Board of Directors & C-level people on LinkedIn to profile what kind of industries lead to this kind of (I believe) privacy violating behaviors? It's a biased question on my part, as Correlation is not Causality! Onwards ..
My limited, biased, AI-driven research suggests the violating behavior ran from June 2016 through February 2019, and that generally the Company was designed to be consumer-app with subscriptions and is healthcare-adjacent, targeting an unregulated non-HIPPA market.
- INVESTORS = consumer subscription apps with ad-driven growth loops
- BUSINESS MODEL =
(1) free or freemium consumer apps where
(2) growth depends on paid acquisition through Meta/Google/TikTok ad platforms, which
(3) requires sending conversion events back to those platforms to optimize ad spend, and
(4) the SDKs that do this are designed by ad networks to hoover up everything by default.
- EXECUTIVE =
* No Privacy / Data Protection C-level officers during violating period
Why would anyone think that a non-HIPPA compliant app would keep medical information private to the level of security needed for medical data? Flo has definitely breached user trust, but that trust seems misplaced from the get-go.
People are used to living in highly regulated markets. When they go to a grocery store to buy lettuce, people don't stop to ask "what regulatory regime is this lettuce being sold under?". They just trust that food being sold in a food store will meet our societal standards for food. I can go to Amazon and order a raw steak for delivery, and still trust it will meet standards.
The situation with wellness apps is that they are a product that are designed specifically to exist outside of the regulatory regime that people associate with them.
>Why would anyone think that a non-HIPPA compliant app would keep medical information private to the level of security needed for medical data?
because lots of people dont know what HIPPA is, and (naively to us more familiar with tech) assume that a medical-related app on a curated app store would be safe for medical-related stuff.
> lots of people dont know what HIPPA is
Ironically, it's HIPAA.
You're right, though; it's much more limited than people think. During COVID people claimed everything violated HIPAA (masks, vaccine requirements, testing), but it only applies in a very narrow subset of patient/provider relationships.
Very much so. Also ironically, as a healthcare provider (paramedic), HIPAA expressly allows me to get your healthcare information without your consent (as needed for your care). A lot of facilities have you sign paperwork to explicitly authorize sharing, but that's really just a CYA.
"Does the HIPAA Privacy Rule permit doctors, nurses, and other health care providers to share patient health information for treatment purposes without the patient’s authorization? Answer: Yes. The Privacy Rule allows those doctors, nurses, hospitals, laboratory technicians, and other health care providers that are covered entities to use or disclose protected health information, such as X-rays, laboratory and pathology reports, diagnoses, and other medical information for treatment purposes without the patient’s authorization."
Source: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/481/does-hip...
The bigger gap is for healthcare and business operations which is very broad and includes datasets for AI training as one example.
That seems entirely unironic and reasonable, though?
100% reasonable (and often necessary - pill shopping, psychiatric concerns, etc. And not irony in the Act itself, more people's perception of its intent.
It is not reasonable to disregard patients' consent so generally. Specific purposes could have specific exceptions.
I think the key is in the course of treatment.
I agree that it's not and never should be a free-for-all with PHI just "because you can".
But if I, as an EMS provider, are treating someone for, say, an overdose, it is rather germane to my treatment of you that you have a history of suicidal ideation or attempts, even if you'd rather I wasn't able to gather that information from another provider's records (because you'd "rather not" be subject to a mandated hold/evaluation if it appears that your overdose was intentional).
I don't need to know, and don't care, if you're transitioning and I'm seeing you for a seizure, for example, it's not relevant. If you're unconscious and I need to see if I can see history or diagnoses or etc., as I'm determining the risk of an intervention to perform on you, then, I may discover that detail, again, in the course of your treatment.
It's not a blanket "I don't care whether you consent or not, I'm pulling your records from the EHR. Sucks to be you."
People just wanna track stuff, they don't really look into is something HIPPA compliant or read the ToS. App store push, recommendation, word of mouth are what makes the app like this spread, not really details HIPPA compliance.
"Because Apple and Google said my data was safe, so it must be safe in the apps. What's hippa?," said more than 50% of the population.
I don't have a period, so I'm not the best person to do it, but there really needs to be a solid FOSS alternative to flo. If GNU had more women, it'd probably already exist
I did a quick review of what FOSS options are currently out there
There are a plethora of open-source implementations available on F-Droid. They need to be looked at for privacy before choosing one, but there are completely offline ones.
If I had confidence I could maintain it, I would love to work on a PWA one
A comparable FOSS app called Drip has been on F-Droid since forever.
Drip has a paradoxical flaw: by trying to be extremely inclusive and making a "gender-neutral" app (without the colour pink) to include trans people, it discourages some people from using it. At least, my friend told me she thought the design was ugly and was looking for a "cute" app, so she ended up using Flo instead of Drip despite my many warnings.
I think FLOSS apps often forget that not everyone is a developer or a nerd who prioritizes privacy and ethics over design, which is a real problem since people end up using proprietary apps that data-mine them.
I don't quite understand your point. Is Drip non-pink to include trans men? That sounds really far fetched to me. And your friend found it ugly because it's not pink? Design is obviously subjectivity and perhaps your friend prefers the color pink, but has any of this actually anything to do with trans people and inclusiveness?
What's your reasoning for the conclusion of the app looking the way it does due to this and not due to the developer just subjectively preferring this design?
Regardless of your opinion on gender and identity politics, surely people can agree that only biological women have periods.
Not quite! While trans women obviously don't have menstrual cycles a good chunk of the population suffer from period-like symptoms/PMS just due to similar hormonal fluctuations.
Of course, but treating transgender men like you would a cisgender woman with all the same gendered expectations is both incredibly disrespectful if done on purpose and humiliating for someone who very much does not want to be treated as a woman despite having a period that most likely already makes them very uncomfortable and dysphoric
> only biological women have periods
generally, yes, but there are so many edge cases there with intersex people that it is far easier and more inclusive to just say roughly 50 percent of the human population has periods and avoid having to deal with the million asterisks that come with that statement
50% of the human population will at some point in their life have periods, perhaps; but presumably (due to childhood and menopause) less than 50% of the human population has recently experienced a period.
Language is consumed by people, not machines.
You don't have to speak like a lawyer.
There is no intersex person waiting to jump out and yell accusatory things at you because you didn't include sufficient asterisks or you said statements that are 99.9999% true.
That sounds not so much as a flaw, as a conscious product decision. And to be honest, doesn't sound like a bad one, not every app needs to work or look the same way, as long as people have choices, they can be responsible for the choices they make. If someone wants a safer but boring app or if someone wants a cute "who gives a fuck about privacy" app, both should be fine.
The government does NOT let people have choices in many cases. People should NOT be forced to choose between medical privacy and potential prosecution.
That your comment even implied that would be acceptable in this context is appalling.
I don't know where you got "the government" from, all I'm saying is that apps should be allowed to have cute designs or boring designs, based on their own judgement, and that people should be allowed to freely choose between those. No one should be FORCED to chose anything, I agree, and I didn't imply anything like that.
I think this could easily be fixed by allowing themes of some kind
took me a while to figure out what you were even responding to:
> Not another cute, pink app. drip. is designed with gender inclusivity in mindful
so a FOSS community should bimboify their app because your friend wants her data pinkwashed more than she wants her data safe? sounds like a her problem but she could always fork herself
I seriously doubt that the vast majority of women would avoid using a period tracking app just because it's not pink and stereotypically girly. Frankly, I find the notion vaguely offensive.
iOS/watchOS has had period tracking functionality with completely sterile design and people use it just fine.
https://www.my28x.com/ I recently heard a talk from this founder. It's free and local, but don't think it's OSS. They have a high ORCHA rating, but waiting to see if they keep their business model this way
How does the sharing between partners happen with 28x, or is it literally local-only as in "solely for one person and no way to share with partner"?
I don't know how many more examples people need to see of big tech not respecting privacy... it's just becoming a farce now. Big tech tracking woman's cycles? Of course they are. (sigh) If this doesn't gross people out enough to seriously pursue alternatives, I literally don't know what will.
It's really sad that we have all this technology but we can't trust any of it.
I'll make a period tracker for you for 5 bucks a month. You won't buy it, because it costs 5 bucks a month. So I'll have to find alternative monetisation strategies.
Why would me giving you 5 bucks a month assure you didn't also sell all of the data from the period tracker app? That's money you'd just be leaving on the table.
Doesn't flo charge ten dollars a month?
https://help.flo.health/hc/en-us/articles/4411278780564-What...
Nobody is going to trust your $5 a month service.
why does it have to be 5 bucks a month and not a one time purchase?
there is a third option: don't make one at all if you feel your only recompense involves selling this data. that's what creeps do.
I think that kind of thinking is similar to the "both sides" stuff in politics. There's a meaningful difference in trustworthiness between different options.
For instance, if you need to track your period, the built in iOS apps are secure, especially if you're using advanced icloud encryption.
The trouble is that it's literally impossible to tell what applications are trustworthy and what applications are not, or whether they'll remain trustworthy over time. So you have to treat them all as untrustworthy. It's a fair rule of thumb because the majority of them can't be trusted.
I'm hearing you say that it's impossible to tell the difference between the trustworthiness of Apple and of Flo?
Now is a good time to bring up.
https://bloodyhealth.gitlab.io
A secure open source period tracking app.
A nontrivial issue is how the app looks, unfortunately
This is one more reason sector-specific privacy expectations probably need to be harder-coded. Hoping every consumer app will independently exercise restraint has not gone especially well.
This article is about a lawsuit filed in 2021.
Hey surely Meta wouldn’t send that data to a government interested in regulating women’s reproductive rights
I'll bite. Why...?
People in power want the information to identify a narrower set of people who may have been pregnant and then did not have a child and so may have had an abortion.
And facebook doesn't care about people's rights when those people in power are able to block Facebook from acquiring some new startup they want to buy, so facebook is willing to share the information.
Handmaids, assemble! Gilead is in your device.
>People in power want the information to identify a narrower set of people who may have been pregnant and then did not have a child and so may have had an abortion.
And what will people in power do with this information?
Are you not American? We have literal abortion bounty programs[1] in some states. There is definitely a desire to find women who have had abortions and punish them for it.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bou...
>Are you not American?
NO, that's why I asked. As per John Oliver's last week tonight, "Did you know there are countries that are not America?"
Isn't it a crime?
Presumably try to get those women arrested, or at least investigate them.
It's actually quite difficult to investigate an abortion, though. Abortion isn't "real", in the sense that there's no obvious difference between a natural abortion (read: miscarriage) and a purposeful one.
The thing that means abortion abortion colloquially is the purposeful-ness of it. If you knowingly terminate a pregnancy, that's an abortion. If your body terminates its own pregnancy, for a variety of reasons because the human body is very complicated, that's not an abortion.
Generally trusting people with that nuance is, I think, asking for trouble.
Do you really have to ask that question? They've criminalized health care. There's motive, history and current events to explain what they'll do with this information.
Do they actually want that or just want to be elected and say things that rhyme with your fears?
Are we assuming the lack of a recorded period is the criteria? If yes, what if you just forgot to add it that month, or have hormonal issues, or abnormal BMI?
You're welcome to suggest to your lawyer this particular defense.
The people prosecuting women for abortions aren't looking for reasons not to arrest and prosecute them.
>The people prosecuting women for abortions aren't looking for reasons not to arrest and prosecute them.
Who are these people doing this?
Texas & West Virginia is one of those states that prosecute women for having miscarriages. Texas offers a $10k bounty for turning in any woman who leaves the state and somehow returns without that pregnancy.
> Nationally, about 20% of pregnancies end in a loss, which includes miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or fetal death, according to federal data. Only a small number are investigated as crimes. But advocates say the growing number of laws in some states place people’s actions following pregnancy loss under greater scrutiny from law enforcement.
> Women in South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and several other states have faced criminal charges after a miscarriage or stillbirth for failing to seek immediate medical treatment, not pursuing prenatal care or disposing of the fetal remains in a way that law enforcement or prosecutors considered improper.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/31/stillbirth-okl...
Many states prosecute black women who miscarry and one of their claims is that the woman took some (illegal - allegedly) drug that caused the miscarriage.
> In the year after the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, more than 200 pregnant women faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth, according to a new report.
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/10/01/200-women-faced-c...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-woman-charged-murder-ab...
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-gop-meeting-death-penalty-wom...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/pregnancy-us...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/after-overturn-of-roe-more...
"Abstract
When Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health first overturned long-standing precedent protecting a woman's fundamental right to abortion, pro-choice leaders issued warnings about the possibility of prosecuting women for abortions. These concerns were dismissed as hysterical or as political theatrics because, in the past, women were rarely prosecuted for their own abortions. This note analyzes the history of illegal abortion before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade to demonstrate that women were targeted, used as leverage against abortion providers, and sometimes arrested for their roles in the procedure." https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol69/iss4/11/
If there aren't people doing this why is it illegal?
Lots of reasons why you would miss a period that aren't pregnancy related. But that's not the point. Missing a period opens you up to further scrutiny and investigation by the state. Now they will start seeing if you've made out of town trips or perhaps subpoena your chat log to see what you've said to friends and family. It's not enough to prosecute, it is enough to start an investigation.
It's scary and all, but does it actually happen?
Does what actually happen? Prosecutions for abortions? Yes. Warrants related to people getting an abortion? Yes. A period tracker being used as the jump off point for those prosecutions/investigations? Hard to say, maybe? If the data is being sold it isn't hard to imagine that prosecutors and busybodies aren't currently mining that data.
> isn't hard to imagine that prosecutors
mainly because I have no idea whether it's realistic to imagine what prosecutors do. I can also easily imagine it to be illegal and wildly unrealistic behaviour for a prosecutor, in my ignorance.
> Warrants related to people getting an abortion?
The question here isn't whether abortion is illegal in some states, but about period tracking data could be used as evidence, or justify an investigation - especially data that is seemingly illegally obtained. AFAIK, illegally obtained evidence is normally not valid grounds for investigation, and might actually weaken the case based on "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.
> I can also easily imagine it to be illegal and wildly unrealistic behaviour for a prosecutor
It's not [1]. There's no safeguards on information available for purchase like this. The US has very little in the way of digital privacy laws.
> especially data that is seemingly illegally obtained.
That's the thing, it's not illegal to sell private data. It's not illegal for prosecutors and cops to buy private data.
It definitely feels like it should be, so I get why you'd think that. Feels aren't the legal code.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...
> it's not illegal to sell private data
In this case, though not covered by HIPAA, it's also not clear there was legal consent to sell this information given it was against their privacy policy.
Yes, often. See a few of the other replies in this thread for examples.
Is there any precedent of subpoena-ing chat logs, or locale information, based on (illegally obtained information of) a missed period; or is this Handmaid's-Tale-fantasy territory?
> illegally obtained information
It's not illegal to purchase bulk data without a warrant. [1]
It should be.
So yes, there is precedent of prosecutors buying bulk data and using it in prosecutions.
In fact, that's basically a huge part of the "value add" of palantir.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...
Well, it is a crime. This isn't about "reproductive rights" then, at least not in all but the most euphemistic sense. Abortion is not a right.
If you stop having a period for a few months and then start again, it may be worth buying some location data during that time to see if you were near any medical offices that may have offered illegal abortion services.
Could they get a warrant for that data anyway?
Not if you don't have the data. This is one of the reasons that google changed how it tracked people's data.
Why get a warrant when you can just buy it?
This whole data economy has significantly undermined privacy, including 4th amendment protections.
Admissible evidence probably requires parallel construction and then a warrant. The purchased data is the catalyst but not legally actionable.
Parallel construction like that is unambiguously fruit from the poison tree. It should never be allowed, and the fact that it is used routinely is one of the many ongoing travesties in the US.
My understanding is that it would be, if admitted to. That's where the parallel comes in: establish an evidentiary trail that's plausible enough to withstand defense scrutiny, and count on the court itself (ie, judge) not to dig any deeper.
Right, but since that's the world we have today, our threat models should all account for it until we can meaningfully change things.
Do you have a ruling that says they can't used purchased data?
How would they select which women get warrants served if they don't have some basic cycle-tracking data?
You can't (in theory) get a warrant "just because", you need to state the grounds for the search in your application for a warrant.
What reason would they have to ask for a warrant without that data?
Not sure why, but they did cooperate with the government on such matters
Facebook previously gave private Messenger chats to Nebraska police, these messages were used as key evidence to charge a mother and daughter over an alleged illegal abortion[1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/10/facebook-use...
Meta is a defense contractor. They absolutely would do this for money if asked. Just like how a good portion of HN would.
The data is already being (ab)used in the UK. https://humanists.uk/2025/06/04/police-access-to-period-apps...
To punish people they suspect in abortion, for example.
I'm not entirely opposed to that. What's the point in criminalising it if nobody is going to enforce the law?
“Reproductive rights” is a loaded term.
This is a very insightful comment. Can you expand on it a little for the rest of the hackers here who might be less smart than you?
its crazy to me that Flo is used so widely, as its started by Russian men and their treatment of data has bee public for a while, it just hasnt spread fast enough. I know theres at least one other option called Calessa (http://Calessa.app)
There's a whole heap of different period tracking apps these days. I've been using Clue for probably a decade.
This one seems clear cut as a HIPAA violation. Glad to hear that interpretation was upheld.
However, regardless, we really need to just kill the data broker business model.
Speaking as someone who implemented GDPR for my startup when the law first came into effect, there were certainly rough edges.
But the core premise that you simply cannot sell user data to sub-processors without consent is a powerful one that I believe would fix a lot of broken things in the US system.
(Not least because the USG buys private data that would be unconstitutional for it to directly collect, but also things like the incentives for your cell phone provider to sell your location data to advertisers.)
> This one seems clear cut as a HIPAA violation. Glad to hear that interpretation was upheld.
Health and wellness apps aren’t covered entities under HIPAA so these disclosures are not violations of it.
Seriously, we have a country where a large fraction of our ad spend is for services that promise to remove your private data from data brokers. We could literally just pass laws so companies could not do this.
HIPAA makes our medical privacy worse, unfortunately.
Same video, different platforms:
(https://odysee.com/@NaomiBrockwell:4/HIPAA:7)
Great video, thanks for sharing.
TL;DW: HIPAA was actually created to allow insurance companies to share patient data without having to get patient consent. Before HIPAA, data was more fractured and less commonly shared. The only privacy protections it offers is, e.g., your doctor not giving your data to your boss. But about 1.5 million private entities can legally access your data (everything from health startups to insurance companies to hospitals)
Reminds me of this Seinfeld episode when Elaine was marked as "difficult" in her chart, and then she couldn't get a single doctor to see her. She wasn't allowed to see her chart or edit it after that. As soon as she got to a new clinic, they would receive a phone call from another doctor warning them not to treat her.
S8.E5 The Package
(https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/seinfeld/comments/168m2d9/anyo...)
I doubt it was a critique of HIPPA, although the episode was published a little under 2 months after HIPPA was signed.
How great would it be for our privacy if they went back to paper records, though.
> But about 1.5 million private entities can legally access your data
Somewhat. They are allowed to access it "for treatment purposes", not just to nose around out of curiosity.
I found myself explaining this to a number of my patients (I used to be a paramedic) who were irate about disclosures they'd made to their therapist, doctor, etc., that they had said they didn't want revealed to other providers (but were actually germane to their care).
"Does the HIPAA Privacy Rule permit doctors, nurses, and other health care providers to share patient health information for treatment purposes without the patient’s authorization? Answer: Yes. The Privacy Rule allows those doctors, nurses, hospitals, laboratory technicians, and other health care providers that are covered entities to use or disclose protected health information, such as X-rays, laboratory and pathology reports, diagnoses, and other medical information for treatment purposes without the patient’s authorization."
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/481/does-hip...
One problem is all the data breaches it encourages. Data breaches are already bad enough with the providers I actually use without 1000s of random companies having access.
That's incredibly creepy.
Does anyone happen to know if Meta and Google have ever recovered these judgements from the app developers? All of the industry terms of service specifically forbid SDK licensees from sending sensitive personal data to the platforms, and they require the licensee to indemnify the platform against any judgement that arises from violating those terms. See Meta's statement on this verdict, which seems pretty reasonable to me. This 100% looks like the fault of the app developer:
“User privacy is important to Meta, which is why we do not want health or other sensitive information and why our terms prohibit developers from sending any.” Meta maintains that any transmission of sensitive health data is due to a failure to comply with its terms of use.
I mean this seems like an attempt at a get out of jail free card. If meta didnt want this info, why are they accepting and processing it?
It's just a generic key-value API.
That doesn't answer the question. It just restates the problem. Why aren't they doing diligence on what they're accepting from their business partners, or what types of partners they're working with? There's no reason they couldn't know the company deals with health data and place it under additional scrutiny.
I will say, with codex/cc access and a free weekend you could make an app that covers like 99% of this app’s purpose. The harder part would be the art/making it cutesy, as some other commenters have pointed out. Plain SwiftUI or compose just isn’t eye catching enough
I don't actually see this as a problem, and instead it's a PSA everyone needs to internalize:
If you put data onto a networked device it may be sent to some place else.
If you don't want your data being shared:
Use a device that does not have any networking capability (both hardware and software wise)
Use a pen and paper, you can shred and destroy as you see fit.
If you're using an application on a mobile device with mobile data/wifi, the chances are, your data is being uploaded.
There are four open source period tracking apps on F-droid. I didn't do a full investigation of the source code, but unless your data is being uploaded outside the app (e.g. for backups), I feel safe assuming it will stay local only.
It sounds like the real solution to this is to be able to control permissions at an OS level for network per app, as you would be able to do if you had root access. I have no idea why regular Android distros don't allow you to do this, it seems like a really sensible thing to expose in app settings given the permissions model of Android.
Of course you do, your comment is just clickbait. Here's why:
| I don't actually see this as a problem
Okay, go on, perhaps you have an interesting point
| and instead it's a PSA everyone needs to internalize
If it's not a problem, it's not a PSA because nobody needs to know or care. If it's something worthy of a PSA, then it must stem from a problem.
Also: if you are not paying the service provider for the service, you are not their customer - you are their product.
If you do pay for a subscription, how can you be sure you're still not the product? What stops them from double dipping here?
If you're paying for a subscription, the company might sell your data. If you're using a commercial service for free, they are certainly selling your data.
Having said that, you're right to be suspicious of commercial services, even that you pay for. Someone can found a startup with a strong commitment to customer privacy and the best of intentions, but a few acquisitions or near bankruptcies later, those commitments will go out the window.
Relevant to this case, since they have a free version and premium one, they would probably just sell data from both sets of customers. It would be leaving money on the table otherwise, right?
The small chance that they might go out of their way to not sell premium users data doesn't seem worth much.
Flo isn't free though, you have to pay a weekly/yearly subscription to use it.
that is a really fucked up view
Less a f-u-view, more a f-u-world, the above is pragmatic advice about the actual IRL challenges of keeping data secure.
Further, a view that ignores many real world digital data risks faced by those considered to be useful targets; eg: compromised supply chains delivering "pre hacked" hardware with discreet wifi chips or hidden out of band comms, etc.
Nah. A healthy view when dealing with the fucked up situation that is modern life.
You can use a networked device, but make sure the data is stored somewhere you control (and own).
> It seems like we can’t just necessarily leave it up to companies – or their ragtag teams of crackpot lawyers rewriting privacy policies every few months – to keep our private data private.
It's not a medical requirement from a doctor, so just keep a diary if you want to. Not everything needs to be an app. All the money spent on regulations and regulators to cover increasingly niche opt-in services that are entirely unnecessary is a waste.
I've never used Flo specifically, so I don't know what kind of data analysis it has available, but period data is the #1 most useful health data to have an app crunch for you, and "your period starts tomorrow" is a pretty darn useful notification to get.
Most of the women I know well enough to know this about them track and predict the onset of their next period without needing an application. It isn't exactly rocket science.
Well, until some years ago we remembered dozens of phone numbers, birthdays, routes, physical addresses, due dates, etc.
The trick is to "give a tool for 1-2 generations of customers" , and then they'll be fully dependent on the tool.
1-2 generations? give an advanced anything to anyone with no true knowledge of how to do it without the tool and you'll have people fully dependent in hours.
kids today cannot navigate without turn-by-turn. nobody looks at the map to get names of major streets, they just blindly follow the directions. I learned how to navigate as a kid just by being bored and staring out the window and being able to recognize things. Now, kids don't even look out the window as they keep their heads down and eyes glued to a screen.
This is a strawman argument. Nobody is arguing that period apps are a necessity. Women have been tracking our periods without computers since prehistoric times. Women were doing rocket science calculations before computers, for that matter. Of course we can do without period apps. But they're more useful than any other health tracking device or app that I can think of.
We're using Flo specifically, mostly for sharing stuff like "her period starts tomorrow" to the both of us, she doesn't really need a notification for that :)
I'm not sure I understand your argument. It's important enough that she has it set up to share that data to both of you, but it's so unimportant she doesn't need a notification for it?
Yes, it is useful for me as a partner to know, ideally without having to ask her, and not important for her to be notified, since without the notification she'll notice it anyways sooner or later...
I'm sorry but this is bordering on parody to me. The way she would notice it "sooner or later" is by her bleeding on her clothes and possibly even furniture. In what world is it important for you to just know about it and somehow not important for her to avoid that?
> The way she would notice it "sooner or later" is by her bleeding on her clothes and possibly even furniture.
No, many can feel it beforehand, and you notice it when you go to the bathroom before as well, as certain things change their properties slightly, it's not a "nothing" phase and then "floods out of your body".
It's borderline parody how little education there is for males when it comes to things like this.
Even if it was a requirement, doctors do not generally have legal authority to compel action. Hell, the average doctor would probably agree that the average patient hardly ever does what they’re told…
privacy legislation would just solve the problem by itself though.
Privacy legislation by itself does not solve the problem; what Flo did was already illegal. Effective enforcement is also necessary.
They need to make an example out of these companies. If your whole business model is built around handling sensitive data, and you are caught shipping off that data to brokers, you should be liquidated or at least fined to within an inch of bankruptcy, as basically all of your profits are a sham.
Fined into bankruptcy and all managers up to and including the CEO criminally charged.
There needs to be penalties that piece the "limited liability" because otherwise it's just "pay to get away with it" as we currently have.
I've been for a "corporate death penalty" (if companies are people, they can be executed) which would result in the shareholders losing everything along with executives being perp-walked.
Not just executives. They don't will these things into existence. Someone had to build functionality to send user data to Facebook.
They've been thumbing their noses at EU privacy legislation and fines for quite some time already.
What does thumbing their noses mean? They have been paying while continuing their behavior, or not paying at all?
The first seems like it could be resolved with an escalating fine schedule, and the second could be mitigated by requiring Apple/Google to remove it from the app store (one of the rare cases walled gardens are on consumers' side).
> What does thumbing their noses mean? They have been paying while continuing their behavior, or not paying at all?
Malicious compliance. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
"While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025."
Or https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/
"UPDATE: Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA."
(This one resulted in enough fuss they backed down.)
Ah you mean generally, not in this specific case.
> privacy legislation would just solve the problem by itself though
Just like banning drugs and murder did!
"would just solve", lol.
Why is it a waste? If you want to provide an app, one should follow the law and the regulations. It isn't the wild west (and even that had regulations).
Also: Why blame the victims, not the perp?
Nobody is blaming victims, please stop these wild fabulations. OP meant that you can't trust app owners especially long term, as you write its worse than wild west, literally nobody.gives.a.fuck. till they are dragged to the court, then they fight, dissolve company, still sell the data, start a new one and rinse and repeat. People are simply way more greedy than moral on average if there is any lesson in current times.
Look at say zuckenberg - a typical sociopath lying again and again through his nose with big grin just to get what he wants (ie scandals how FB employees go to DB to spy on their exes or enemies is popping up for 10 years at least and there is no stop, every time there is another assurance how it can't be done now blablabla... and thats just specific meta employees).
Nobody likes that, but just sitting and waiting for almighty regulators while blindly trusting apps in good faith to do their jobs is... not working much, is it. Be smart, adapt to real environment out there, not some wishful thinking. In parallel push for change as much as you can, vote with wallet and your time. Once sought-for paradise comes then feel free to use anything anyhow. At least that seems like smarter approach to me.
> still sell the data
So add liability for the buyers of the data or any services derived from the data (e.g. targeted ads). Make it so large advertisers demand audits showing privacy laws are being followed. Also have personal criminal liability for people building and maintaining systems that collect, store, or process data for illegal purposes. Executives, PMs, engineers, the whole lot. Put them in prison if they continue.
> All the money spent on regulations and regulators to cover increasingly niche opt-in services that are entirely unnecessary is a waste.
That isn't what's happening. The regulations don't get little niche cases added to them, they're writen to be generally applicable to all niches.
> It's not a medical requirement from a doctor, so just keep a diary if you want to.
"Just don't use the computer if you don't want companies to rat you out to the fascist government that'll imprison or kill you for having a miscarriage" is a ridiculous victim-blaming position.
It's the practical reality of a fascist government that they won't enact privacy laws. And yes, women really shouldn't be using period tracking apps in the US, or made by the US. But that doesn't mean privacy laws are some "silly waste of my tax money".
It's not a "medical requirement" except for the many many many cases where it is. Similarly, this position extends to literally everything. Nothing "needs to be an app". But unless we want to pack up and discard the entire software industry, it really ought to be better about privacy like this.
Forest for the trees, dude.