Daily News | Should you worry about data from your period-tracking app being used against you?
That got us wondering — are these concerns warranted, and should people who use period-tracking apps delete the data or the app completely from their phones? We asked the experts.Privacy policies — specifically, whether the apps sell information to data brokers, use the data for advertising, share it for research, or keep it solely within the app — vary substantially among companies.
Period-tracking apps are often not covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, though if the company is billing for health care services, it can be. Still, HIPAA doesn’t prevent the company from sharing de-identified data. If the app is free — and the company is monetizing the data — then “you are the product” and HIPAA does not apply, Savage said.
“The data can be sold to third parties, such as big tech companies; or to insurance companies, where it could then be used to make targeting decisions, such as whether to sell you a life insurance policy, or how much your premium should be,” saidFlo Health, headquartered in London, Companies have the option of extending those rights to people living in the U.S. via their privacy policies and terms of services. If they do so, the FTC can then hold the companies accountable for those commitments, said Deven McGraw, Invitae’s head of data stewardship and the former deputy director for health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.
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