- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- 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.
You must log in or # to comment.
My wife uses a spreadsheet and connected it to her calendar. Seems pretty accurate.
It is a modified version of this:
For now
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.
Cool but the proper solution is that they shouldn’t have access to this data at all. It should be either stored locally, or encrypted on their servers. Companies not being able to access their consumer data should be the default.
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.
Shit which reminds me. Now I have to stop using the app… and delete it.
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.
That is some darkest timeline Abed type stuff.
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.
Were people unclear on this? They think that the US is just letting cyber warfare happen without participating…?
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 is a pretty wild name to call your menstrual tracking app.
Everyone says that. Idk what the big deal is
Don’t fall for it. Read their privacy policy.
They keep your data in the cloud and share it with third parties, including advertisers.
Pen and paper doesn’t snitch.
not defending the bogus use of the cloud to host sensitive data, nor do i unquestioningly believe this? but correcting the record since you did 80% of the work in finding the link:
Be assured that the sensitive health data you track in the Clue app is never shared with or sold to advertisers, or any partners whose services we may recommend in Clue.
If you actually read what you sent it seems like the only data that is shared to advertisers is standard marketing stuff like IP, device ID, age group, and location. Still bad and I stand with others recommending locally hosted FOSS alternatives.
There are also foss alternatives. Install fdroid and get drip.
Drip is a horrible name for a period tracking app lol
I mean at that point just call it Bleed lol
GUSH
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
That was my first thought. Why?
You guys are talking about it arent ya?
And look how fast you memorized the name.
Why do they need to save the tracked period data to a server farm? Why can’t it just be saved on the phone, huh?
Probably because they want to be able to maintain users during device switches. Given much of the world is on an annual or bi-annual cycle it’d suck to lose your users each time.
They could just do the password manager approach where the data is encrypted on your phone but stored in the cloud. App retains users, sensitive data remains private.
I wonder how many average users would be bothered to export their period database and transfer to a new phone every time they get a new phone. I do that when I get a new phone (not often, I use my phones till they break/are literally unusable and unfixable), but I’ve had real trouble getting other people to do these kinds of things.
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.
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…
