Period trackers 'coercing' women into sharing risky information

Female health monitoring apps are putting women at risk by "coercing" them into disclosing - and then poorly handling - highly sensitive data, according to new research.

The study examined the privacy policies and data safety labels of 20 of the most popular of these kind of apps, which are commonly used to help women conceive. It found a host of poor data-management practices, including some apps not having a delete function, even for highly personal information such as menstrual cycles and miscarriages. Its authors say it is the most extensive evaluation its kind completed to date. They say the apps are used by hundreds of millions of people.

The BBC has contacted a number of app providers - none have responded to a request for comment.

"While female health apps are vital to the management of women’s health worldwide, their benefits are currently being undermined by privacy and safety issues," the lead author of the study, Dr Ruba Abu-Salma, from King's College London, told the BBC.

Other key findings from the study include:

• 35% of apps claimed not to share personal data with third parties but contradicted this in their privacy policies
• 50% assured users that health data would not be shared with advertisers, but were ambiguous about other data collected
• 45% of privacy policies denied responsibility for third-party practices, despite claiming to vet them.

Female-focused technology has boomed in recent years, with the market expected to exceed $75 billion by 2025. But Lisa Malki, another of the study's authors, said the industry needed to get better at protecting the women whose data it was using.

Read full article on the BBC here.