According to Fox Cahn, apps that collect and store data on their own servers are particularly dangerous, both because the data can be sold and hacked, but also because law enforcement officers can serve companies with subpoenas for user data. In a recent report, STOP pointed out that some apps allow users to store data on their phones — a much more secure option — but one that still doesn’t protect them against a search warrant.
But Fox Cahn says the concern goes much deeper than just fertility apps. “Basically, any health data app for pregnant or potentially pregnant people can be used as a weapon.”
To understand how, all you need to do is look at the country’s immigration infrastructure, said Paromita Shah, executive director at Just Futures Law. The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has long used data to monitor and arrest activists and immigrants, she says. “There’s no consumer privacy law I’ve seen that could really affect the police,” Shah said. “And they’re buying this data to get around their obligations to follow the Constitution.”
Even if users decide to remove time-tracking apps, their data may already have been collected. For those who want to keep using them, McGraw says, “it takes a lot of effort” to make sure data isn’t shared. None of the companies responded to questions about their usage figures.
“What you can usually do, but what people rarely do, is pay a little more attention to the terms of service and privacy policies of the apps you use,” she says. But deleting data that’s already available would only be possible “if you own a business covered by a state law that gives you the right to delete.”
Euki, an app from the international group Women Helping Women, anticipated many of these problems. “Obviously, when someone makes an app, they want to make money with it, they want to pay for it. And the way they recoup their costs and make a profit going forward is by marketing the data,” said Susan Yanow, a reproductive health consultant and the organization’s U.S. representative. “We got a grant to make Euki because we were a non-profit organization. We were never looking to make up for those expenses. The goal was to get it into the hands of as many people as possible as safely as possible.”
Euki, which contains information about abortion, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and miscarriages, stores all data on the user’s device rather than uploading it to a remote server. It is password protected and allows users to set a second password which, when entered, will bring up a second, fake app, even keeping the nature of the app a secret. There is even an option to delete all collected data.
In the weeks since the draft decision leaked, Yanow says Women Helping Women has seen a massive influx of users to the organization’s website, which she hopes will lead people to the Euki app.
“We truly believe that the person who owns the app is the person who should decide what needs to be done [a missed period or pregnancy]should that happen,” says Yanow.
