'Frightening safety risks': Women warned about the dangers of using period tracker apps

Women look "frightening privateness and information risks" erstwhile utilizing play tracker apps, experts person warned.

The idiosyncratic accusation collected successful these apps - including exercise, diet, medication, intersexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception usage - could beryllium "sold astatine scale" to airs "risks and harms for users", academics from the University of Cambridge said.

A study from experts astatine the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy stated that menstrual information tin connection insights into women's wellness and their reproductive choices, making the apps that cod them a "gold mine" for user profiling.

"There are existent and frightening privateness and information risks to women arsenic a effect of the commodification of the information collected by rhythm tracking app companies," Dr Stefanie Felsberger, pb writer of the study said.

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The researchers said galore women download the apps erstwhile they are trying to get pregnant, which leads to a displacement successful buying behaviour.

"Data connected who is pregnant, and who wants to be, has truthful emerged arsenic immoderate of the astir sought-after accusation successful integer advertising," they said.

The study stated that rhythm tracking apps (CTA) "are a lucrative concern due to the fact that they supply the companies down the apps with entree to highly invaluable and fine-grained idiosyncratic data".

"CTA information is not lone commercially invaluable and shared with an inextricable nett of 3rd parties (thereby making intimate idiosyncratic accusation exploitable for targeted advertising), but it besides poses terrible information risks for users," the authors wrote.

The experts constituent retired that the collected information could effect successful wellness security "discrimination", risks to occupation prospects oregon adjacent home maltreatment if it lands successful the incorrect hands.

They called for amended governance of the "femtech" industry, including improved information information and "meaningful consent options" successful these apps and urged nationalist wellness bodies to motorboat alternatives to commercialized play tracking apps.

Period tracking apps person gained popularity worldwide, with 250 cardinal planetary downloads of the 3 astir fashionable apps.