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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
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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:
The only way to protect data is to not gather it.
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.
If only the user has the key then there’s no real concern with the data being handed over
False
rnturnt
So the government just needs to acquire this data from one of those third parties if it wants it.
so what they’re really saying is they won’t give it away for free
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.
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There are also foss alternatives. Install fdroid and get drip.
Drip is a horrible name for a period tracking app lol
What an insightful comment, the_crotch
It actually inspired me to start writing my own competing period tracking app, Margaret Plug That Up Already You’re Ruining The Carpet
I like you
I mean at that point just call it Bleed lol
GUSH
That was my first thought. Why?
You guys are talking about it arent ya?
And look how fast you memorized the name.
I had to check my phone for the name.
Yeah they may not cooperate with authorities, but I’m sure they’d be happy to sell it to contractors working on behalf of the government to the same ends. They already sell the info as it is.
Period tracking apps should store no data at all in the cloud.
That will last only until a judge signs a warrant.
Or until the American people get bored with talking about it, like with everything else, then stop caring and just let whatever happen.
Or until Trump decides to have an army of hackers like Putin.
We already do. We wage cyber warfare with other countries the same.
Drip is also available on F-droid.
Why the hell period data needs to be stored on the cloud?
How much could it weight? A few Kb? Local storage!
I would never trust such data leaving my device when is no need for it whatsoever.
Aren’t there any open source period tracking apps? I’ll do one, it can’t be that hard. An sqlite database patched to a frontend calendar and some basic predictions based on normal scenarios.
Aren’t there any open source period tracking apps?
Many. On F-Droid.
drip. menstrual cycle and fertility tracking (Open-source, non-commercial and leaves your data on your phone.) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.drip/
I wouldn’t trust it. We now live in an era where, if you want control of any kind of information, you simply can’t share it digitally in any way.
menstrual surveillance
Now that’s a phrase I would’ve never thought I would read.
Why? It’s a logical outcome of the combination of mass surveillance and draconian anti abortion laws. This is the sort of shit the judicial construction of the implied right to privacy was kinda built around stopping. This is just straight up the sort of shit Snowden warned us of.
So yeah, the federal government (and likely state as well), who have the data from your personal devices to understand far more of your sex life than you want your friends knowing, much less your Senator, are able to purchase or subpoena data from menstrual tracking apps and will do as the law tells them to. The law, meanwhile is written by a group of people who are vastly disproportionately elderly men with little to know understanding of any branch of science or medicine. A group notable for comments like the assumption that ecoptic pregnancies can be replanted and that presenting a snowball disproves global warming. The one gynecologist of note to have been in Congress in recent memory being Ron fucking Paul, who incidentally was anti choice.
To sum my previous paragraph to a thesis statement: people who have no idea how bodies work and couldn’t tell a Skene’s gland from a vas deferens and disproportionately think pee comes out the vagina get to decide the rules by which people who know every aspect of your life that they choose to look for decide if your menstrual irregularities are normal or an illegal abortion.
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.
Still not worth the risk to download it. Get a paper journal, they make ones that guide you through tracking all the necessary data.
Paper without some sort of code to hide what’s happening isn’t much better, considering if something ever happens you could get searched.
Sure I guess but you can also just leave it at home.
Can’t those app offer this feature : replace all the original data by pseudo random data shifting the menstruation cycle in a way that would benefit the user at that moment ? Or : shift all data to x days (easier to undo)
It’s crazy that we live in a world where we have to think about such things…
First I thought “WTF is period data a thing that should concern the government”, but then I noticed we are talking about the future Handmaids Tale country here.
Newsweek has really trash headlines. No one’s asking, yet, so that’s a terrible headline.
(Yes I voted Kamala, and yes I did it for medical autonomy reasons as well as orange potato reasons, Vance reasons, heritage foundation reasons, and Project 2025.)
It’s still a trash headline and pretty standard fare for Newsweek. Why is it trash? Because it’s classic The Boy Who Cried Wolf. When I read this headline, I need it to be real.
