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.

  • Katzastrophe@feddit.deEnglish
    72·
    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
      45·
      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
        38·
        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
        23·
        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
        36·
        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?

        • ReallyZen@lemmy.mlEnglish
          16·
          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.