A British Columbia Supreme Court judge says a class-action lawsuit can move forward over alleged privacy breaches against a company that made an app to track users' menstrual and fertility cycles.

VANCOUVER - A British Columbia Supreme Court judge says a class-action lawsuit can move forward over alleged privacy breaches against a company that made an app to track users’ menstrual and fertility cycles. The ruling published online Friday says the action against Flo Health Inc. alleges the company shared users’ highly personal health information with third-parties, including Facebook, Google and other companies.

  • macisr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    51·
    10 months ago

    Damn man, my gf pays for this app. That’s how we track her days. Corpos even know when we’re probably having sex now D:.

  • LucidBoi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    10 months ago

    Wow, my girlfriend uses this. Time to get her a FOSS-grown solution. Fuck the corpos!

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.worldEnglish
    372·
    10 months ago

    Come on, it is the 21st century.

    Nobody should assume any other reason to create such an app than to harvest and sell personal medical data.

    • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
      10·
      10 months ago

      I wrote a period tracker app that also encrypts/password protects the data at rest. If you’re concerned about someone taking your phone and accessing your data, it may also be worth a look.

      ~~https://github.com/cameroncros/PrivatePeriodTracker~~

      ~~https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cross.privateperiodtracker~~

      Drip looks better for most people though. But they should add encryption if they dont already have it.

      Use drip.

      • abominable_panda@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        10 months ago

        Encryption and password protection is in the changelog for drips first version v0.0.1 - 5 years ago

        I couldnt find your app on fdroid btw

        • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
          7·
          10 months ago

          Huh, thats good. I scanned their website for mentions of encryption and didnt find it.

          Mine isnt on fdroid, wasnt worth the effort. May as well remove from Google Play as well tbh, Drips seems all round a better option.

          • abominable_panda@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            10 months ago

            Yep it was a struggle to find. I checked website, issues and then finally made a last attempt at the change logs. It should be advertised more for that added piece of mind.

            I didnt mean to shoot your app down by the way, in case it came across that way. Ive never used these apps

            Thanks for developing your version though. People like you make this community what it is :)

            • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
              6·
              10 months ago

              I’ve never used my app either, I lack the prerequisites :D I wrote it for my partner last time there was a thing about US cops going after the data. But I dont maintain it, so drips is the better option in general.

              When drips gets caught selling data I’ll revive my app :D

  • yemmly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    10 months ago

    I remember back in my teenage days, I tried to track some menstruations. It didn’t end well.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1312·
    10 months ago

    It’s 2024. People still assume apps installed on their phones aren’t siphoning every single 1 and 0 on your phone including your texts and recordings of your voice calls and then selling that data to a 3rd party advertising firm.

    Why in FUCKS name would you put your menstrual cycle data on an app that some stranger made?

    • Plague_Doctor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      Agreed. Although I think the usefulness of the apps are aimed at tracking fertility to help people get pregnant. Which is even more scummy that they sell the data.

    • Thorned_Rose@kbin.social
      1·
      10 months ago

      I think you may be way underestimating the number of people who have no idea the software they use is spying on them.

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      If it’s under free licence like MIT, GPL or alike app can be inspected what it does and anything out of place we can remove.

  • Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
    214·
    10 months ago

    There’s not a word in this article about why this breach of privacy matters while others do not. It’s not stated whether this was in the terms of service for the app, and whether those terms were ruled against.

    All kinds of apps have been selling personal information for a long time, and it’s been ruled before that it’s allowed if they have the proper legalese in the terms of service. Did this app just not have any terms of service?

    Why is it a breach of privacy for this app, but other apps doing the same selling of personal data is not?

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      10 months ago

      Why is it a breach of privacy for this app, but other apps doing the same selling of personal data is not?

      From the article…

      The lawsuit alleges that Flo Health misused users’ personal information “for its own financial gain,” claiming breach of privacy, breach of confidence and “intrusion upon seclusion.”

      IANAL, but my understanding, after having read the whole article, is that regardless of the fact that there may or may not have been an agreement between the app creator and its users, that they still ran foul of laws that cannot be waived by any sort of TOU/EULA agreement.

      • Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
        14·
        10 months ago

        I read the article too, and those things you quoted sound to me like things every app does.

        Hence my question: what is different here?

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
          71·
          10 months ago

          regardless of the fact that there may or may not have been an agreement between the app creator and its users, that they still ran foul of laws that cannot be waived by any sort of TOU/EULA agreement.

          It’s not a matter of something being different or not. It’s no matter what, it’s illegal. Law trumps any TOU/EULA.

          • Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
            15·
            10 months ago

            So what are they doing that illegal that other apps aren’t doing??

            I really don’t know how to be any more clear with this question.

            • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              10 months ago

              So what are they doing that illegal that other apps aren’t doing??

              I really don’t know how to be any more clear with this question.

              From the article…

              The lawsuit alleges that Flo Health misused users’ personal information “for its own financial gain,” claiming breach of privacy, breach of confidence and “intrusion upon seclusion.”

    • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
      70·
      10 months ago

      Periods are awful to keep track of yourself, it’s not a perfect, “every 4 weeks for 5 days” thing. Those apps actually recalculate the beginning and end of a period when something abnormal happens, like stress moving the period back a few days. This way you don’t need to keep it in a personal calendar, which mind you, a lot of people don’t even have.

      Btw, most apps do also more than just regular tracking, they can predict how bad blood flow will be, and if your periods are known to be rather painful, they can keep track and remind you when a day comes on which you’d need to pack a few extra painkillers.

      • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.worldEnglish
        44·
        10 months ago

        Hard to argue with any of those points. Nice of you to kindly elaborate for people trying to blame the victims of the scheme.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          35·
          10 months ago

          While the explanation is great, I feel like it shouldn’t even be necessary. Like, if people are using an app, can we not just assume that they have a reason for it? A reason that, to them at least, is a good one? Regardless of what the app is about, or which demographic is using it, it seems infantilising not to make that assumption.

        • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
          21·
          10 months ago

          Periods are never properly explained in school, a lot of people simply get taught by their mother, or survive with what little knowledge the biology textbook holds about them.

          I cannot blame someone for not knowing how awfully complicated they are, when school at most teaches about the ideal period, not even mentioning how much can affect them, or how awful they can be for some people.

      • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I dislike the commenter’s attitude, but I do agree with parts of the message. I would prefer to treat any closed-source, internet-connected app as “collecting everything it can”, just because it has been the logic for a while. I would not trust my messaging or files to a centralized, closed platform - so why would I use something suspicious for health data this sensitive?

        • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
          34·
          10 months ago

          Maybe you could direct your righteous anger at the people misselling the app, not the people who use it to help them get pregnant or to avoid becoming pregnant in a proto-fascist society that has removed their right to an abortion?

          • ReallyZenEnglish
            15·
            10 months ago

            For Women’s Right Day, the android app store featured the lead of Security and Privacy of this very app. A lady BTW. Fuck me sideways how that was a ton of crap, retrospectively. She said in so many words the usual “privacy foremost” and other such obvious shit, then she also said “no selling ever”.

            I despair of humanity.

        • V0uges@jlai.luEnglish
          12·
          10 months ago

          I’ll check my subscription but Im pretty sure Proton doesn’t calculate when I ovulate.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          10 months ago

          I used these kinds of apps when I was a teenager. I could not keep up with a calendar - I tried but my cycles were too irregular to be predictable based on the calculations I could find in books and the internet. I’m transgender and found the entire experience unpleasant in a fairly intense way.

          Those kinds of apps helped me immensely. Most of them offer some sort of discreet icon or password system - my parents were the type to read my diary/calendars. My periods are all over the place, and I was able to safely log a pattern in related pain/duration/quantity… most of them included links to places to find medical information. I found one that wasn’t pastel pink and just treated me like a person keeping track of their medical statistics. I got to feel neutral about a part of my body which I despised.

          The problem is not that people are naive enough to hand over the information to a third party they can not trust. The problem is the paucity of information and resources for menstrual health. Periods are complicated and scary. When you’re a teenager, you’re not worried about data security - you’re worried about trying to make sure you know when your next cycle will start so that you don’t experience the hell that is bleeding through your pants in math class.

        • BakerBagel@midwest.socialEnglish
          6·
          10 months ago

          I especially wouldn’t recommend anyone in the a red state in the US to use a period tracker. States are serious about prison sentences for people seeking abortions and even miscarriages. If a state like Texas or South Carolina gets ahold of that information it’s going to ruin your life.