Can menstrual tracking apps risk women’s safety and privacy?

Commercial apps that track menstrual cycles and share that data risk compromising women’s safety and privacy, according to a report published by the University of Cambridge.

In a market that is lacking in regulations, the report authors warn that the data could result in health insurance discrimination, risk to job prospects, limits on access to abortion and increases in the likelihood of cyberstalking for women.

The report ‘What is at stake when menstrual data is collected and sold at scale’, claims that such trackers are a ‘gold mine’ for commercial advertisers, and call for public health bodies, such as the NHS, to provide trustworthy, research-driven alternatives to cycle tracking apps (CTAs) that are potentially driven by profit.

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Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles may be used for consumer profiling, providing advertisers with much more than the dates of a woman’s period, the researchers suggest. This information may then be shared with third parties, ranging from advertisers and data brokers to tech giants such as Facebook and Google. Shared data could include information on exercise routines, diet, medications, sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use, with the financial worth of this data being ‘vastly underestimated’ by users in a market lacking regulation.

Most women use CTAs during the time they are trying to get pregnant, and this additional information is of ‘huge commercial value’, the researchers say. With the exception of buying a home, the researchers highlight that no other life event has such a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour. For targeted advertisers, data on pregnancy is estimated to be 200 times more valuable than consumer information relating to age, gender or location.

The report indicates that the three most popular CTAs are expected to have an estimated 250 million global downloads by 2024. By 2027, the value of ‘femtech’ is estimated to exceed US$60 billion, with menstrual tracking apps accounting for half of this total.

‘Menstrual cycle tracking apps are presented as empowering women and addressing the gender health gap, yet the business model behind their services rests on commercial use, selling user data and insights to third parties for profit,’ said Dr Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD student at the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the work.

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Recognising the high demand for CTAs, while highlighting the safety concerns for women using these apps, the report authors argue that the NHS should develop its own app which women can trust. The data collected could, with permission, be used in medical research. The US already has an equivalent, run by Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organisation that provides sexual health care in America and globally.

In the UK, menstrual data is given special category status, similar to genetic or ethnic information, and is therefore subject to legal protections. However, the researchers argue that enforcement of existing regulations is lacking. They highlight that data is often collected and shared with ‘no meaningful consent’. Within this landscape, they suggest there is an urgent need to enhance public awareness and digital literacy regarding the use of period tracking technologies.

Professor Gina Neff, also from the University of Cambridge, who wrote the foreword to the report, added: ‘The UK is ideally positioned to solve the question of access to menstrual data for researchers, as well as privacy and data commodification concerns, by developing an NHS app to track menstrual cycles.’

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She added: ‘Apps that are situated within public healthcare systems, and not driven primarily by profit, will mitigate privacy violations, provide much-needed data on reproductive health, and give people more agency over how their menstrual data is used.’