The billion-dollar industry has faced scrutiny for its lax approach to private information By With millions of users globally, the women’s health app market is projected to . Yet these apps are . They collect data about users’ menstrual cycles, sex lives and pregnancy status, as well as information such as phone numbers and email addresses.
In recent years, some of these apps have come under scrutiny for . A number of , researchers reported in May at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Honolulu. The team evaluated the privacy policies and data management features of 20 of the most popular female health apps on the U.
S. and U.K.
Google Play Store. They found instances of covertly gathering sensitive user data, inconsistencies across privacy policies and privacy-related app features, flawed data deletion mechanisms and more. The researchers also found that apps often linked user data to their web searches or browsing, putting the user’s anonymity at risk.
Some apps required a user to indicate whether they had had a miscarriage or abortion to use a data-deletion feature. This is an example of , or manipulating a user to give out private information, the study authors point out. Study coauthor Lisa Mekioussa Malki, a computer science researcher at University College London, spoke to about the privacy and safety implications of the findings.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It’s one thing to think about privacy as safeguarding data.