Experts that spoke to WIRED say that fertility and period-tracking apps could be a rich source of data for law enforcement looking to punish women if abortion is outlawed or criminalized.
: “If you are using an online period tracker or tracking your cycles through your phone, get off it and delete your data. Now.” It had never occured to many women, until then, that their data could be weaponized against them. But experts that spoke to WIRED say that fertility and period-tracking apps—along with the myriad other data trails that users leave behind—could be a rich source of data for law enforcement looking to punish women if abortion is outlawed or criminalized.
“If there's an app out there that's collecting health data, it will soon be a target,” says Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project . “One of the sad ironies of this is that people who are actively trying to get pregnant will have a harder time using the technology to do it for fear of how that technology might be used against them in a court of law.
Fertility and period-tracking apps vary, but most allow users to manually enter when their periods start and end, whether they use birth control, the length of their cycle, and their moods. Some allow users to track their periods as well as pregnancy. Many apps also allow users to sign in with their Google or Facebook accounts. Some also collectWIRED reached out to five popular fertility and period-tracking apps: Flo, Glowing, Clue, Glow, and Pinkbird.
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