Privacy International finds popular period tracking apps, including MIA Fem and Maya, are sending monthly timings, contraception use, symptoms, more to Facebook
including “when women last had sex” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... via @BuzzFeedNews Lisa Tozzi / @lisatozzi : Period tracker apps are sending deeply personal information about women's health and sexual practices to Facebook, new research has found. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
BuzzFeed NewsMegha Rajagopalan
Context & Ripple Effects
Privacy International is extending a campaign it began with its [[a:937078|finding that TripAdvisor, Kayak, Indeed and MyFitnessPal were passing Android users' data to Facebook, possibly in breach of GDPR]]. Months earlier, the Wall Street Journal had documented the same mechanism — Facebook's analytics SDK leaking sensitive user information like heart rate and pregnancy intent from popular apps.
MIA Fem and Maya users' most sensitive health and sexual data is flowing to Facebook through the apps' embedded analytics, apparently without meaningful consent — the named developers face immediate privacy scrutiny.
Privacy International now has a period-tracker-specific case to pair with its earlier GDPR complaint against mainstream apps, sharpening pressure on Facebook's SDK as a data-collection channel.
Second-order effects
Every period and pregnancy tracker using third-party analytics SDKs gets pulled into the same investigation, since the mechanism — not just the two named apps — is the story.
Facebook faces a widening gap between its ad-targeting business and the health data feeding it, forcing a choice between SDK data flows and regulatory exposure across its app ecosystem.
Third-order effects
The Mozilla finding that 18 of the top 25 period and pregnancy apps had poor privacy practices shows the pattern persisted for years — intimate health data routed through ad-tech is becoming a structural feature regulators must address.
With Roe overturned, menstrual and contraception data shifts from a targeting asset to potential legal evidence, raising the stakes of the same pipeline Privacy International flagged in 2019.
The trend: Intimate health data is moving through ad-tech SDKs from privacy scandal to legal liability, with researchers and regulators converging on the app-to-Facebook pipeline.
Menstruation apps have asked their users when they have sex, about their contraception methods, their mood, their health history, their lifestyle, their habits... And they shared it with Facebook. Today we shed light on their data sharing practice. https://www.privacyinternationa…
NEW! Today we expose 5 menstruation apps that have been sharing their users' most intimate data about their health and sexual lives with Facebook and other third parties. Read our research: https://www.privacyinternational.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Period-tracking apps sent Facebook data about women's contraception, mood and when they'd had sex: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @karen_ec_levy calls it “menstrual surveillance.” Once the data is out there, women have zero control over where it goes https://www.washingtonpost…
This is all because advertisers desperately want to know if you're pregnant, ideally even before you know it. That way, they can start hitting you hard with ads about baby products, getting product loyalty before competitors. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
these period apps are sharing things like contraception use with FB, & the articles it suggested to you based on your health data. whom does FB allow to target those users on that basis & other inferred attributes, & who else does FB share that with? https://www.buzzfeednews.com/…
Honestly don't understand why there aren't more startups creating on-device, non-cloud health trackers. Something that functions better than an Excel sheet but also doesn't sell your extremely private health data to advertisers. https://twitter.com/...
“An app sharing my shopping cart/wishlist with Facebook is one thing, but details like these are very private and must remain confidential” @BuzzFeed covered our research about menstruation apps and interviewed app users. Read what they had to say: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ .…
facebook in 2008: i love writing on my friends wall! did you see that funny bumper sticker i sent you? plz like my status! facebook in 2019: we know when you've been fuckin 😎https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
*Extremely Get Out voice* No. No no no no. No no. No. Period Tracking Apps Used By Millions Of Women Are Sharing Incredibly Sensitive Data With Facebook — including “when women last had sex” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... via @BuzzFeedNews
Period tracker apps are sending deeply personal information about women's health and sexual practices to Facebook, new research has found. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...