The team behind menstrual health and period tracking app Clue has said it will not disclose users’ data to American authorities, following Donald Trump’s reelection.
The message comes in response to concerns that during Trump’s second presidency, abortion bans that followed the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 will worsen and states will attempt to increase menstrual surveillance in order to further restrict access to terminations.
Research conducted by the Mozilla Foundation indicates that the app referred to in the article, Clue, gathers extensive information and shares certain data with third parties for advertising, marketing, and research reasons.
Here are some menstruation tracking apps that are open-source and prioritize user privacy by keeping your data stored locally on your device:
So the government just needs to acquire this data from one of those third parties if it wants it.
Drip doesn’t save anything to the cloud, it’s all local to your device. I can’t speak to the others.
Which does mean one has to backup and manually move your tracking history to a new device. Guess who forgot to do that 😂
Good idea is to use something like Syncthing to copy data between your phone and another device like a laptop or another phone. This depends on the app, for Drip you have to manually export the data yourself on a regular basis.
Another useful idea is if you have an old phone lying around get it connected via Syncthing and back up everything to it. If your current phone dies or is lost you can switch back immediately, a hot backup. If you have root on your device you can use NeoBackup to schedule backups of the data into a folder Syncthing can access and send to backup locations, say a home computer or spare device.
Sure, but tracking period data can be very helpful for people. For a threat model of abortion criminalisation (or maybe trans healthcare criminalisation with treatments stopping periods, or really any kind of restrictions on medical autonomy), encryption at rest of locally stored period data is perfectly sufficient. They are not going to send military intelligence agencies after a random person having an abortion. It is actually a relatively low threat model, like equivalent to buying drugs online or something like that.
I mostly mean having data stored in a centralized database owned by a corporation. Since even if it’s encrypted you’re just one warrant away from the data being handed over.
Good news but kind of bad that they say this publicly.
The pro of showing support for reproductive rights, building trust and protecting user privacy is great for publicity but I am afraid the downsides will eventually lead to legal consquences, making the whole thing seen even more political than it already is and that it might have a huge impact on their business.
The last thing might sound stupid, but it’s a business. And if you have crazy woman who will not use this because they support the ban on abortions the sells will go down in for example republican states making the company MORE VULNERABLE to changing how they think about sharing data to authorities or not.
And yes america has woman who totally want the government to be in control of their bodies LOL. And yes america has many people who can’t even figure out the name of bordering states. States, not countries. Ask 10 americans and only 5 will know that Canada is directly above (North) of america and Mexico South.
You have Burger King removing the 1/3 pounder Burger because people thought it’s less than a 1/4 pounder Burger cause 4 is higher than 3 making Burger King have less sells on the 1/3 Pounder than the 1/4 LOL.
Sometimes not talking about specific topics is “more” than even speaking about it. Just don’t share data and say nothing, they won’t ask. Most maga’s trumpers won’t ask if you don’t give them a foundation to poop on.
The hilarious thing though is that most abortions are done in California, but only because of abortion tourism (example from Texas). A typicall trumper will now claim this is wrong and say democrats love abortions… This is so sad.
You have Burger King removing the 1/3 pounder Burger because people thought it’s less than a 1/4 pounder Burger cause 4 is higher than 3 making Burger King have less sells on the 1/3 Pounder than the 1/4 LOL.
This isn’t a company that has a great track record. They are saying this now when Trump is powerless as a form of advertisement. When up against a legal wall and at risk of losing advertisers or going out of business, they too will cave. In this era you get to say whatever you want right now and you don’t even need to apologize when you renig on it tomorrow.
Period tracking apps should store no data at all in the cloud.
no cloud or get fossed, son.
Seriously how some business makes money doesn’t matter in the context of state surveillance
Some people want convenience of accessing the data between devices.
It’s okay to store stuff in the cloud just make it’s encrypted deeply and thoroughly and that the user is the only person with the key.
There’s absolutely no reason for them to have access to this data.
Yup. I use Tuta for email, and they have a calendar feature that should be more than sufficient. Just set a recurring event for 28 days or whatever your personal cycle is, and you’re good to go! Everything is E2EE, so there’s nothing for the authorities to get.
I’m sure Proton Mail’s calendar feature is equally sufficient here, or you could self-host something like NextCloud and use the calendar that way.
It’s not about having a rigid schedule, but about actually tracking periods and analyzing the data. I’m male and that’s about all I know about it
You actually have your period the same time everytime like in a textbook? That’s sounds pretty nice, first time I heard someone has that. Usually it’s pretty random, like sometimes it’s 20 days sometimes it’s 35 and you have to calculate it with the daily temperature. I’m kinda jealous ngl
They say that, but when Ken Paxton subpoenas them they will say they have no choice. It would be better to use an app that doesn’t store this data server side at all.
FOSS Period Tracking Apps Exist: (there may be others, as well)
https://fossdroid.com/a/bluemoon.html
https://fossdroid.com/a/mensinator.html
https://github.com/TotallyMonica/foss-period-tracker
Also paper and pencil.
Also the oldest known “writing” is a stick with 28 notches on it.
How does an app being FOSS defend them from warrants?
Edit. Thank you guys for the details. I learneded something new today, much appreciated.
FOSS implies it’s your hardware, therefore a subpoena would extract no information because there is no information outside of the users device.
It doesn’t, but with these apps, you can see what information they send back to their servers (if any). If there is no info getting sent back to any servers, then there’s nothing a subpoena can do since there’s no info to subpoena. You can’t obtain info that just isn’t there.
Simple. Most FOSS are built for privacy and thus do not harvest data to send to some server somewhere in the world for whatever obscure reason. The data is locally stored on your device and stays and dies there.
No callback, no selling nor surrending data.
Personally speaking, I’d quicker have all data banks destroyed than surrendered to whatever purposes, if I ever decided to build an aplication that somehow compiled data.
Something being FOSS doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe / ethical, but a LOT of FOSS apps are designed with those principles in mind.
However, being FOSS means that if an app claims that it is safe / ethical (ex. In this case, not storing data anywhere but on your device), you or an experienced peer can check the code to verify that fact.
This kind of surveillance should be something every platform fights against. Remember that the government does not own you and they are only entitled to any of your data at all when necessary to uphold the law and under a warrant. Protect your right to privacy or they will use what you do I private to justify stripping you of all your other rights in the name of justice they will at that point no longer uphold.
Every corporation registered under the US law is subject to the US law.
If you relying on a corpo to protect your data… 🤡
No I’m relying on people to protect their own data, I’m saying that platforms should too. Edit: also most of the time they don’t have to turn over anything but do so willingly, they should say no unless presented with a valid warrant.
Biowink GmbH is probably not a corporation registered under US law. If I had to guess, the government of Germany will not be particularly eager to force them to turn over data to the USA. The Germans take their Datenschutz very seriously.
Great point. Then they can take the hard stance but I doubt they will not to piss off largest consumer market in the world.
