The US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe vs Wade Judgment on Friday, which took away abortion rights from American women that had been there since 1973. The court decision brought the focus back to pro-choice vs pro-life debate, triggered angry reactions across the world.
Another fear has been triggered by the decision. Since the judgment with people worried that the information could be accessed by the government to persecute the users, calls to delete period-tracking apps have grown louder.
There is always a concern that data related to period symptoms, pregnancy plans, ovulation cycles, etc., that are usually tracked on these apps, is passed on to Big Tech companies for targeted advertisements. In the post-Roe vs Wade world, people are worried that these period-tracking apps could have to hand over data to law enforcement authorities. If the information was to indicate that a user had had an abortion, the companies and the user could be summoned.
There is no rule out of the possibility that the odds of the government demanding data from these period trackers are low, according to tech-policy researchers. Users should not live with a false sense of security, according to Blum-Dumontet, who published a paper on the privacy policies and practices of period-trackers.
Abortion rights activists and privacy advocates have been encouraging people to delete the period-tracking apps and some of these apps have spoken up.
We are committed to protecting your private health data, and we have been doing it for a long time. Your tracked experience should empower you, regardless of your private health decisions. We will never allow anyone to use it against you. One of the period-tracking apps, Clue, tweeted on Sunday.
The app said in a statement that the European data privacy laws would protect its US users since their data can't be subpoenaed from the U.S. Clue is based in Berlin Germany Flo, another one of these apps, has announced a new Anonymous Mode that will remove the user's personal identity from the Flo account so that they can't be identified.
Flo has been hit by a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission in the past that the app has shared users information with companies like Google and Facebook.
While apps like Flo are scrambling to make their apps bulletproof, there is an issue that both these apps and tech companies must figure out -- either stop collecting data or protect it better.
Eva Galperin, the Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that users of contact lists, friend lists, messages, location, searches, health information, and metadata need to be protected by all tech companies, not just these period trackers.
If tech companies don't want to have their data turned into a dragnet against people seeking abortion and people providing abortion support, they need to stop collecting that data now. Galperin tweeted, Don t have it when a subpoena arrives.