[HN Gopher] Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for adverti...
___________________________________________________________________
Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks
women safety
Author : Improvement
Score : 273 points
Date : 2025-06-11 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cam.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cam.ac.uk)
| sandra_vu wrote:
| I have been thinking about building a privacy-first tracking app
| for years now.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| The problem is that stuff like privacy and open source don't
| attract the vast sums of venture capital that ad-selling
| businesses do. Sure, an average dev could probably build a
| working app like that - but could you ship the same quality as
| someone who can afford to hire an entire UX team?
| guappa wrote:
| Probably... it would not make you sit through 30 seconds of
| ads so that would be a great UX improvement.
| asgerhb wrote:
| Never mind quality - how can you achieve the same reach as
| someone with an advertising budget?
| lesuorac wrote:
| imo, the real problem is that you need to consistently ship.
| It you made a one-off app then it's going to get de-listed
| for not being updated despite not needing an update.
| carstenhag wrote:
| No, but people don't care about UX perfection in comparison.
| Usually it just needs to work and not get in the way.
| freshprince wrote:
| Someone already did that with drip.:
| https://bloodyhealth.gitlab.io/
|
| Maybe you would like to contribute?
| guappa wrote:
| Please, make sure it's available on f-droid as well, just being
| there means it's more trustworthy.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| I make one! It's called Reflect.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
| OJFord wrote:
| Seems too nerdy for the market at large - the correlation
| etc. features might well be as good as or better than what
| the likes of Flo provide, but people will have a harder time
| understanding that than simply 'your next date is expected to
| be x', 'your cycle is typically x days', etc.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| We definitely cater to a niche that wants to know the nitty
| gritty details. We're trying to layer the app such that you
| get the TLDR first if you want, and can zoom into the
| details of why second
| sdoering wrote:
| Funded by Mozilla (and others): https://dripapp.org/
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Planned Parenthood makes one
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotontrac...
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| If anyone is interested in a privacy focused tracking app that
| stores all your data locally, I make an app called Reflect [0]
| whose sole purpose is this, plus on-device analysis.
|
| We're working on a menstrual tracking feature right now and it's
| pretty far along. We've just released an anomaly detection
| feature as well.
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-
| anything/id64638...
| oulipo wrote:
| I guess using FHE like from https://zama.ai you could provide
| server-side features without compromising privacy
| leereeves wrote:
| That sounds like a good idea with one obvious challenge: how
| can you prove that data will remain private forever?
| bmacho wrote:
| Simple + open source + no access to network + no updates (idk
| about Android/iOS cross-app data sharing).
| xenator wrote:
| Still data can be uploaded to the cloud and will be
| available to cloud providers.
|
| So there is more vectors to protect user data.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > no access to network ?
| josephg wrote:
| I wish this were a capability you could (as a user) grant
| or reject at will. But there's a UI problem: people are
| sick of clicking accept on a million dialog boxes
| already.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| GrapheneOS gives per-app network access control.
| antiframe wrote:
| Your wish exists. The first thing my phone asks before I
| install a new app is whether to allow network access or
| not.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| Android and iOS developers need to explicitly request
| network access in their app's configurations.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Still, I can steal your phone or use my $5 wrench to get
| the data. There is no guarantee, so why bother.
| Hypotheticals can always be used to shit on any idea.
| They just are not always helpful
| ablob wrote:
| What's your threat model?
| omeid2 wrote:
| I was going to say operate it under a non-profit but then I
| laughed in Altman.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| That's a tough guarantee, ultimately you're placing trust in
| the device's security once you limit your attack surface to
| just local data. So that's why we're working on encryption
| with key custody. Any feature like cloud backups are
| explicitly opt-out by default so no one is putting their data
| onto someone else's servers without knowing what they're
| getting into.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Just to be clear, you're saying cloud backups are off by
| default, and the user must explicitly enable them?
|
| If so, just FYI I believe that pattern is usually referred
| to as "opt-in." As in, the feature is off by default, and
| the user must opt in to using it.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Yes, you have that right
| ethbr1 wrote:
| (Don't take any of the below in a negative sense! It's
| awesome you built a privacy-first solution and care about
| these things, to the extent practical. Below just musings)
|
| I assume the attack vector here is more along the lines of
| 23andme bankruptcy -- if developer is bought by a new
| corporate entity / priorities change, what guarantees exist
| that privacy architecture won't backslide via updates?
|
| Users shouldn't be concerned that a minor update or
| corporate sale will change the bargain they made around
| their privacy.
|
| Honestly, it'd be great if there were scaled third-party
| cloud key escrow services coupled with enforced legal
| guarantees.* ^
|
| It feels like we did cloud wrong from a legal/privacy
| perspective by not separating keyholder from data-at-rest-
| holder (legal entity wise). Tenant-based encryption is
| basically there... just still mingling data and key
| ownership in the same entity.
|
| GDPR / right to be forgotten would be trivial if there were
| always a third party (who enforced requirements on any
| first party) I could submit a request to, that would burn
| my keys on their side, thus rendering first-party stored
| data un-practically-retrievable.
|
| (And a third party because, similar to the browser+CA
| system, balancing power against each other to enforce
| guarantees of good behavior seems effective)
|
| * Legal guarantees like "no caching keys for longer than X"
| or "no unencrypted user data at rest"
|
| ^ Cloud hosting encryption keys would also solve the ugly
| UX edge of strong encryption around "I lost my key...
| help?"
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| For people living in the US of Freedom, wouldn't it be good
| think to 'keep putting in' cycles, despite pregnancy? Should
| anything untoward happen later, a quick flash o' the app and
| "Nope, Officer, no siree. Like clockwork, me...".
| XorNot wrote:
| Duress modes are a frequently overlooked feature in general -
| e.g. I don't want to just block access to my location, I want
| to lie about my location entirely.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I also would like "give an incorrect location" as an
| option. Something like that would probably never be
| supported by Google or Apple officially, because unlike
| some other privacy features, it's actively and overtly
| hostile to advertisers.
| em-bee wrote:
| murena - e/OS/ has that as a feature.
| dylan604 wrote:
| regardless of what apple/google allow officially, the
| cell carrier also has tracking locations. if you're going
| out to do something that you would want to hide your
| location, it's best to just leave the device at home. get
| a burner phone paid for in cash by someone not you doing
| the transaction.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Just pointing out this is an all-or-nothing strawman
| argument summed up as: if you can't have it all, don't
| bother trying. It's fallacious. That is all. :^)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I disagree to it being a strawman. If you are doing
| something where you location being identified could put
| you in a spot of bother, do not carry anything that can
| track your location. There's just no way around it. If
| you want to use wavy hands to pretend tracking of
| location isn't so bad, then you go ahead and call it a
| strawman. For people whose physical safety depends on not
| being tracked, it is _not_ a strawman.
| bluGill wrote:
| Your cell carrier operators under very different laws and
| ability to harm you. Sure they know where you are, but
| most of the data flowing across their network is
| encrypted and so they mostly know you have a lot of data
| to AWS, google, and the like but not what it is. Google
| as the endpoint of that data has the decrypted version of
| the data and so they know what it is, and so they can
| target you in different ways.
|
| If you are going to commit a crime (rape, murder), then
| all the police need is to know who owns the phones in the
| area and so you need a burner phone to hide your tracks.
|
| However most of us are not worried about crimes. We are
| worried about privacy. We are not doing anything illegal,
| but google still knows far too much about us and is using
| that to legally abuse us with advertisements. While we
| all want to pretend we are good at ignoring
| advertisements, most of us have bought things we don't
| need and don't really want (or spent too much on things
| we did need/want).
| dylan604 wrote:
| You seem to have lost the plot a bit. In several
| locations, it is illegal for women to get certain health
| care. There are parties out there that are very
| interested in policing those policies. To prove that, it
| doesn't matter where they get the tracking data as long
| as they can prove your location. If someone needs a
| warrant/subpoena to get the data from a cell carrier or
| some app developer it doesn't matter to the person being
| persecuted for seeking health care.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Apps that fuzzy or fake your GPS location are available
| on android.
|
| I needed one when working on an app with store location
| detection and it worked pretty decently. I have no idea
| what it became or if it can be recommended, but there
| should be a bunch with recent reviews in the Store.
| argomo wrote:
| Not just location, but all privacy sensitive API's. The
| OS should have built in support for segregating location,
| contacts, calendars, storage, etc. (GrapheneOS does this
| quite well with storage scopes). As part of this
| segregation you should be able to redirect the API to a
| custom implementation.
|
| Thus, my transit app would have access to my real
| location while Amazon thinks I'm still at home and
| Pokemon Go thinks I'm on an around-the-works trip to
| collect location specific items.
| freedomben wrote:
| For years when Android was a lot more root friendly, this
| was easy to do. IIRC there was an Xposed module you could
| activate to do it. If you root I'm certain there are
| still apps that will do it, though I'm sure Google/Apple
| will be actively hostile against it, let alone actually
| support it
| josephg wrote:
| I want this for my contact address book too. "This app
| would like to know all your contacts. Allow / send empty
| contact list / generate garbage data"
|
| I'd also enjoy if my advertising cookies were randomly
| reused by people all over the globe. And I'd like my phone
| number and email address to get associated with dozens of
| other identities.
| em-bee wrote:
| there is an alternative contact app that doesn't share
| your data. you can then fill the default contact app with
| fake data or leave it empty.
|
| i am not sure if the last point is a good idea though. i
| get what you want to achieve. anonymity in numbers and
| plausible deniability, but you are more likely to get
| mixed up with problematic stuff others are doing rather
| than protecting yourself. having a common name already
| shows that. it is both a blessing and a curse.
| freehorse wrote:
| > there is an alternative contact app that doesn't share
| your data. you can then fill the default contact app with
| fake data or leave it empty.
|
| You may want to share your contacts with app X but not
| with app Y, though.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I don't get the downvotes. Plausible deniability is a valid
| concern when menstrual cycles and geolocation can lead to
| criminal repercussions in many states of USA [0].
|
| Nevertheless, if I was a fertile woman, I'd be more concerned
| of my phone/tablet/car leaking my visits to an abortion
| clinic than a police officer checking my phone.
|
| 0. https://states.guttmacher.org/policies
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Is this actually enforced?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Really neat app, thanks for sharing.
| tveyben wrote:
| Thanx - sounds like what I need ;-)
| TechPlasma wrote:
| Do you have a link to the Android app?
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Unfortunately no android yet, but you can track progress
| here: https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-
| version-o...
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I'm building an app with the same concept but web based first
| and converted to Android and iOS via Capacitor, for now.
|
| It's not released yet, but if you'd like to get an e-mail
| notification you could take a look here:
| https://dailyselftrack.com/
| pickledoyster wrote:
| The report in the OP raises valid concerns about SDKs from
| third parties, including Google and Facebook. Your own site
| showcases the Reflect SDK which is, I quote:
|
| > The Reflect SDK is the iOS framework that powers the Reflect
| - Track Anything app and is designed to help you: > > Create
| forms to track customer product usage and experience > Collect
| customer biometric data [...]
|
| Source: https://ntl.ai/products/
|
| Let's just say I'm skeptical about your claims.
|
| Edit: provided a more extensive quote and link to source.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| This is a totally valid concern. Initially we were
| considering augmenting our income with a B2B model to license
| the library we've built, but that didn't pan out and our
| priorities have changed, so we solely work on the apps for
| customers now. I actually forgot this was even on our website
| and, since we aren't trying to offer those services or
| license anymore, I've removed them.
| hamburglar wrote:
| This looked promising, but the first two things I tried to
| record with it seemed just outside of its capabilities. I track
| blood pressure daily, but it didn't seem to have a way to
| record a metric that has two numbers. In addition, I record the
| sodium and potassium values of everything I eat, and I want a
| way to record the name of the food item along with those two
| values (preferably providing a dropdown for previous entries
| that auto-fills the numeric parts).
|
| Also, the nagging about buying premium was quite aggressive and
| it made me feel like I couldn't even get a feel for what the
| app is like first.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Yeah, there is no support for "multi-dimensional" metrics. So
| systolic and diastolic would each have to be their own
| metric. Food tracking in Reflect could use some work, but if
| you link with Apple Health, Reflect can pull data from
| Cronometer or MyFitnessPal for example.
|
| Any particular place you thought the premium was very
| aggressive? I'm open to changing that, it's not the kind of
| feedback we normally get. Thanks for saying so
| hamburglar wrote:
| A lot of things I clicked on just led to an upsell page
| that wanted me to do a week trial that led to a $49
| monthly, which surprised me since I hadn't even begun to
| explore and only had a single metric which I'd never even
| recorded a datapoint for. And it seemed like I only was
| allowed to define a single metric, so I tried to delete it
| in order to create a new one, but clicking "delete" on it
| was apparently a premium feature as well. I gave up.
|
| You really need to let people actually use the product with
| no commitment, see how it's useful, and then bug them a
| month later.
|
| Btw, I found a bug: on the page where there are three big
| buttons and the third is "load a csv", the csv button isn't
| clickable. Only the icon on it is.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Thanks for all that feedback! One minor point is that the
| 49.99 is annual. You can define and record unlimited
| metrics and data on the free version so if you can't then
| that's a bug for sure. Also, noted regarding the import
| bug, thanks for that.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| That looks very interesting. I'm building almost the same
| actually: http://dailyselftrack.com/
|
| Any reason your app is iOS only?
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Reflect started as a passion project for myself and my
| partner with no intention to make a product out of it. By the
| time we thought to do so, we'd already put so much into just
| iOS that doing an Android version as well was its own huge
| project.
|
| We still plan to implement Android, we have a roadmap where
| we track this:
| https://changemap.co/ntl/reflect/task/9239-android-
| version-o...
| wferrell wrote:
| Are you going to have it be local only?
|
| I think you would be interested in seeing what Flo has done
| using OHTTP: https://oblivious.network/ohttp
| bryanhogan wrote:
| It won't be local-only, it will be local-first. So you
| won't have to put your data online if you don't want to.
| wferrell wrote:
| Are you using OHTTP? If there are cloud aspects - I think you
| would want to. Learn more: https://oblivious.network/ohttp
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| No, because we don't have any servers. We don't track
| anything about our users, not even logs or usage.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| What kind of "analysis" is done on the data ? We have apps like
| mensinator that are very simple.
|
| I'd like to know if it is different from these simple apps ?
|
| Note: im a guy btw
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| Do you mean for menstrual data specifically?
|
| Currently for general data there is pearson correlation, five
| different anomaly detection algorithms, and T tests for
| significance among other things.
|
| The work in progress we have for menstrual tracking takes
| temperature, flow, and past grund truth data into account. I
| know that's vague, and it's because my partner is working on
| it, not me :)
|
| When we release the cycle tracking we'll have a full writeup
| fragmede wrote:
| What homomorphic encryption technology have you looked into
| using? this is a good use case for that technology.
| NoTranslationL wrote:
| I agree it could make sense one day but, as I mentioned in
| another thread, we don't have any servers and so we don't
| collect or host any user data (encrypted or not). In fact, I
| really don't want to; it's overhead and costly, and might
| involve compliance with HIPAA or GDPR, and I just would
| rather the user be in charge of their own data.
|
| Having FHE for local data would be very interesting though.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > arguing that apps must provide clear consent options rather
| than all-or-nothing data collection
|
| What's wrong with "nothing"? Other than the companies not being
| able to squeeze a few more dollars out of selling user data, of
| course
| chii wrote:
| the 'nothing' doesn't mean no data sent - it means you don't
| get access to the app's features if you don't consent to the
| data collection.
| clvx wrote:
| If there's something I'm looking forward with end to end vibe
| coding tools like Github Spark, Lovable and others is getting rid
| of these suckers. It would be easier to provide similar
| functionalities and customize them without major issues. Yes,
| it's still not seamless enough for your average user but it's
| heading in the right direction.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| It is painfully evident sometimes that America desperatelyl needs
| a GDPR-like federal law. The state-by-state laws are by nature
| peicemeal and it makes for a wild west of outright PII abuse.
| yatopifo wrote:
| Even if you could create such a law, at this point in time, no
| law can protect americans agains persecution by government-
| affiliated groups who are immune from court scrutiny thanks to
| their protections at the very top. You would first have to send
| corrupt SC justices to prison, impeach Trump and prosecute all
| his henchmen. Forgive me, but i doubt this is going to happen
| now that the US is officially a dictatorship. There is no point
| in laws if you have no independent courts and almost no one is
| willing to stand up for democratic principles.
| techjamie wrote:
| Tracking the populace is a bipartisan goal, not just a
| Republican one. Democrats support some good measures like Net
| Neutrality, but they're also getting behind the "protect the
| children" surveillance laws just like the Rs. Even when
| they're in power, the best we get is department chiefs like
| Lisa Khan doing good work that the next administration
| reverts.
|
| But on the lawmaking end, they're still pretty complicit.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| at this point it is already pretty known but mozilla read the tos
| of some of the most used period apps and analyzed it
| https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
| JohnBooty wrote:
| For those wondering why this is a safety issue, in many American
| states abortion or "fetal harm" is considered murder. You can be
| imprisoned, theoretically _for life._ This is of course a rapidly
| evolving area of law since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Having one 's
| menstrual data available for subpoena is therefore quite a
| literal safety risk.
|
| "At least 38 states authorize homicide charges for causing
| pregnancy loss"
|
| https://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinical-programs/hrgj/pr...
| fhdkweig wrote:
| As a clarification for the "I didn't do anything wrong, I have
| nothing to hide" crowd, most of the time when someone is
| pregnant and then suddenly not pregnant, the cause is a
| miscarriage. And most people would go see a doctor if there is
| a lot of pain or bleeding. An overzealous prosecutor (usually
| running for election) is going to make the claim that you went
| to a doctor and now you aren't pregnant, you must have made an
| abortion. And now you have to hire lawyers to argue in court.
| And all in a easily 3rd-party mass-suppeonable database. That's
| why this is such a big problem.
|
| https://thegeorgiasun.com/news/woman-arrested-after-miscarri...
|
| https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/02/law-pregnancy-...
| msdrider wrote:
| Surely the burden of proof is on the prosecution?
|
| I don't have a problem with this. If a child - even an unborn
| one - dies in mysterious circumstances, I would prefer the
| inconvenience of a fruitless investigation over the prospect
| of living in a society where we don't even care enough to
| ever be suspicious.
| freejazz wrote:
| So you want the state to investigate every single
| miscarriage?
|
| Where did "mysterious circumstances" come from? I didn't
| see it mentioned anywhere in this thread...
|
| Do you think a miscarriage is a "mysterious circumstance"?
| I can only assume so, given your response. That seems like
| the result of what could only be tremendous ignorance.
| mstridder1 wrote:
| Ridiculous strawman.
|
| Do you not want police to investigate reports of someone
| disposing of human remains in a dumpster?
| freejazz wrote:
| It's not a strawman. You said "mysterious circumstances"
| when we are talking about miscarriages. Do you think they
| are the same or not? It's a very simple question.
|
| >Do you not want police to investigate reports of someone
| disposing of human remains in a dumpster?
|
| What does this have to do with a miscarriage????
| mstridder1 wrote:
| Oh, check out the links that started this discussion.
| tldr- A woman was seen disposing of a baby's body in a
| dumpster, prompting an investigation. She was ultimately
| cleared as it was indeed a miscarriage.
|
| That's what I've been talking about. Obviously nobody's
| being investigated for routine miscarriages.
| freejazz wrote:
| > Obviously nobody's being investigated for routine
| miscarriages.
|
| Sorry, how does a third party know the miscarriage was
| "routine?" What is a non-routine miscarriage? Why would
| it be criminal, it's still a miscarriage? What's the
| suspicion?
|
| The article you refer to, the investigation happened, not
| because there was a miscarriage, but because a body was
| seen being dumped...
|
| Maybe it was the mistake of the other poster for sharing
| that link, but I do not see what it has to do with your
| point at all. Either miscarriages are illegal or not...
| you said they should be investigated when they are
| "mysterious circumstances" and I am repeatedly asking you
| to explain when a miscarriage is a mysterious
| circumstance? Even more so, when is it such that it has
| any relevancy to this discussion about the state tracking
| a woman's pregnancy through digital data.
|
| >Oh, check out the links that started this discussion.
| tldr- A woman was seen disposing of a baby's body in a
| dumpster, prompting an investigation. She was ultimately
| cleared as it was indeed a miscarriage.
|
| What about all the other incidents in the other article
| besides the one you decided to talk about because you are
| not willing to state whether or not you think a
| miscarriage is a "mysterious circumstance?" Which seems
| like a very straightforward question and I do not
| understand your unwillingness to provide a response when
| your previous posts make it very unclear as to whether or
| not you think a miscarriage is a normal occurrence.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I find the "shouldn't we investigate dumping possible
| human remains into a dumpster?" question to be a red
| herring at best but: yes, sure, we should. I do not find
| it relevant to menstruation data captured by an
| application. If we have the remains, we know the age of
| the fetus or baby, and can prove whether a particular
| suspect is the mother of that fetus or baby.
| Obviously nobody's being investigated for routine
| miscarriages.
|
| It is absolutely not at all obvious to me that this will
| continue to be the case, especially if the data to do so
| exists -- which is the central point of this discussion
| about why women would rightfully view the sharing of
| their menstrual data as a potential safety risk.
|
| In fact the _opposite_ is much more "obvious" to me: I
| think a lot of people in America (and elsewhere) would
| absolutely support such a thing.
| stevenbedrick wrote:
| At least one county prosecutor in WV is, in fact,
| discussing investigating routine miscarriages:
| https://www.wvnstv.com/news/local-news/prosecutor-warns-
| of-p...
|
| From the article:
|
| > State law does not require a woman to notify
| authorities when she miscarries, but Truman said that
| women who miscarry in West Virginia can protect
| themselves against potential criminal charges by
| reporting the miscarriage to local law enforcement. > >
| "Call your doctor. Call law enforcement, or 911, and just
| say, 'I miscarried. I want you to know,'" advised Truman.
|
| Now, in fairness, the state's association of prosecutors
| has clarified that this is not official policy and that
| the association as a whole does not support it. But it's
| definitely not out of the realm of possibility.
|
| https://www.newsandsentinel.com/news/local-
| news/2025/06/pros...
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Obviously nobody's being investigated for routine
| miscarriages.
|
| Not obvious that this will remain the case. These
| advocates did not just disappear once they achieved their
| goal of overturning RvW. They are working towards their
| next milestones. I guarantee you there are at least
| politically active citizens in all 50 states who would
| support criminalizing routine miscarriage, if not actual
| elected officials working towards it, and speaking
| publicly about it.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| There is nothing mysterious about a miscarriage. They are
| common. According to the Mayo Clinic:
|
| > Miscarriage is the sudden loss of a pregnancy before the
| 20th week. About 10% to 20% of known pregnancies end in
| miscarriage. But the actual number is likely higher. This
| is because many miscarriages happen early on, before people
| realize they're pregnant.
|
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pregnancy-
| los...
|
| Subjecting a person who is already upset about her
| miscarriage to a fruitless investigation is cruel and
| stupid; I'd prefer to live in a society where we understand
| that miscarriages happen as a part of nature and don't need
| to further torment the people who suffer from them.
| mstridder1 wrote:
| As I understand it, in this case, a witness saw a woman
| throwing a child's remains in a dumpster. After
| investigation, it was cleared as a miscarriage.
|
| What would you prefer? We turn a blind eye to people
| disposing of bodies? Cops refuse to investigate such
| reports?
|
| It sounds like everything worked as intended here. Of
| course it's unfortunate for the innocent woman involved,
| but this is clearly not a witchhunt.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This line of discussion inevitably boils down to what
| one's definition of a human life is and whether a fetus
| at a particular stage of development meets that
| definition.
|
| Let's not have that discussion here on HN. It's not going
| to be fruitful.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| For a conviction, yes, the burden of proof is on the
| prosecution. But in the meantime, you have to pay for a
| lawyer, and you will be sitting in jail for a year because
| they don't give bail for murderers. And as for the lawyer
| bills, the court doesn't refund you the money when you are
| found innocent, and it isn't going to be cheap, not for
| murder.
|
| The process is the punishment.
| blueflow wrote:
| Behind this is the utterly asinine social idea that
| miscarriages are something rare.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Yep now instead of menstration cycles and abortion, replace
| it with antisemitism or grass-eaters or any other political
| disposition. You may be getting denied jobs because of posts
| you made to an anonymous imageboard which you thought were
| anonymous, but something like your Grammarly extension sent
| all your typed text up the pipe and now the corporate-state
| squid knows you're a wrongthinker full of thoughtcrime.
|
| Intel agents look for blackmail to gain leverage over
| targets. I wonder how many security cleared personnel are
| going to be vulnerable to Chinese and Iranian extortion, once
| a database run by one of the cloud-based cannabis CRM+POS
| companies gets leaked with all that customer and purchase
| info. I am seriously considering making a fake ID for pot
| shops, so they quit typing my name into their cloud-connected
| fucking databases!
| bluGill wrote:
| Try replacing it with something that wasn't even a concern
| years ago but now is the hot topic. Various things go in
| and out of style. Those harmless pranks you did as a kid
| that everyone laughed at then are now immoral and enough to
| get you on.
| duxup wrote:
| I think it's a big leap from "menstrual tracking" to being
| prosecuted because ... what? A gap in the tracking data?
|
| That's too distant a connection for me to believe that
| information really would change anything.
| bArray wrote:
| Combine this with the Meta Pixel illegal localhost tracking that
| bypasses privacy measures [1] [2] and the privacy leaking could
| be off the scale.
|
| I think this goes for all things - medical data such as heart
| rate, blood sugar, steps, weight, VO2 max, etc, could all be
| seriously misused.
|
| Personally I try to use apps that are not cloud-based, or make my
| own, but this isn't an option for everybody.
|
| [1] https://www.zeropartydata.es/p/localhost-tracking-
| explained-...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44235467
| input_sh wrote:
| You don't need a Meta pixel if the app simply... shares the
| data with Facebook, as Flo was caught doing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flo_(app)#Privacy_and_security...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| In the current climate, no one should use a menstrual tracking
| app of any kind, even those with on-device-only data. Asking
| normal people to figure out the risk profile of that data, and to
| evaluate the trustworthiness of a given app, is just too much.
|
| Use a paper calendar.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Even people in Canada? New Zealand?
|
| Many billions of people live completely free of this concern.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The risk profile of paper seems to be equal to the risk profile
| of on-device-only? How do they differ?
|
| Something you have v. something you have
| XorNot wrote:
| Paper is easier to destroy quickly, and to also plausibly
| lose or deny having.
|
| This is actually one of the biggest problems I've found with
| Yubikeys: they're both too fragile yet also hard to reliably,
| deliberately destroy quickly.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I really don't agree. If I take a photo on my phone, it can
| be deleted in less than a millisecond. Shredding a paper
| calendar takes at least 30 seconds. I don't see denial of
| ownership as a legitimate strategy to data confidentiality.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Assuming the ToS for your photo app didn't change at some
| point and do something different with the data.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| It can be marked as deleted in the file table. Destroying
| a paper can be done on the toilet or simply eaten.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| nitpick: data is at least partially recoverable for both
| of these examples for a period of time as well. so they
| are kind of soft deletes.
|
| but yeah, probably much faster to full delete than most
| cloudy services with backups. along with some other anti-
| recovery benefits (the bodily fluids kind).
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| if you have an iphone [0], im not exactly sure how you're
| able to truly delete a photo in a millisecond as you have
| to go through
|
| * a pop up dialog confirming you want to delete the photo
| with the below message
|
| > This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo on all
| your devices. it will be in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
|
| * deleting the photo a second time from recently deleted
| folder, with a second confirmation dialog
|
| > this will delete the selected photo from icloud and all
| connected devices
|
| bonus round: any device which has previously downloaded
| the photo, but is not connected to icloud services at the
| time of deletion, requires you to physically go to that
| device and connect it to icloud / manually delete the
| photo all over again.
|
| --
|
| versus, take cigarette lighter out of pocket, start
| burning paper, wait.
|
| [0]: statistically probably quite likely given HN
| demographics and iphone market share
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You can give file access to other apps on your phone, no?
| Apps can be sold to a new owner with different views on what
| to do with this data. Data on a device vs data on an Internet
| connected device vs paper have obvious differences.
| everforward wrote:
| The practicality of dragnetting it. Google and Apple could
| decide or be forced to start syncing that previously only-
| local data. There is no central entity to mass-collect paper
| without sending out an army of people to raid homes.
| beAbU wrote:
| The argument is that normies can't differentiate between apps
| that are really safe (i.e. on-device processing + data)
| versus apps that merely say they are safe, nor do they have
| the tools/knowledge to verify these claims.
|
| It's safer then to recommend to stay away from apps entirely,
| and rather use paper, for as long as you have that piece of
| paper, your data is private and safe.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Use a paper calendar.
|
| Well yes and no. I do see what you're getting at, but in
| certain environments, e.g. abusive relationships, it might be
| easier to keep you secrets on your phone. You're more likely to
| be able to keep track of it at all times, as compared to a
| notebooks or a calendar. It can also store years of data
| easily. Ideally storing these things in the cloud would be
| safer that storing them on device or on paper, but that assumes
| that the cloud providers can be trusted.
|
| So in this case the menstrual tracking app would be a cloud
| service that only you have access to. Data stored encrypted,
| only to be unlocked when you access it. It's just, you can't
| monetize that easily and how would people who truly need 100%
| privacy pay? Bitcoin, how would they get Bitcoins?
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| As usual, we need laws preventing gross (in every sense)
| invasions of privacy. Building new apps that aren't evil still
| allows the evil ones to exist. Targeted advertising as a whole
| should be eradicated.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Truly - how is this not data theft?
| thmsths wrote:
| Because you "technically" agreed to it in the 5000 words long
| terms and conditions, you also agreed to the clause that says
| they can change at anytime.
| makapuf wrote:
| Maybe limit the contract that a person (who is not a
| professional in the subject of the contract) can sign to
| 200 words. Anything past the 200th word doesn't exist even
| if you sign it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Laws don't seem to work when it comes to Meta, Google, et. al.
| They just do what they want anyway.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They don't need apps to do this. I sat in a meeting with a data
| broker in 1998 where one of their managers was chuffed that they
| could determine menstrual cycles by analyzing purchasing records.
| And it wasn't hygiene products. Various foods and other spending
| patterns pop out after a 28-day correlation over groups of women
| that are artificially "synced" into cohort groups.
|
| This invasiveness will continue so long as there are no consumer
| data protection laws.
| beAbU wrote:
| Joke's on them, my wife likes ice cream every day.
| em-bee wrote:
| does she eat more ice-cream during menstruation or pregnancy?
| does she change flavors? there may be patterns that you are
| not aware of. only a steady ice-cream subscription would be
| able to hide that.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is interesting though. How would these sorts of
| correlation be protected against? We already know that
| anonymous health data can be traced back. Gather enough data in
| any domain, and you can pinpoint someone.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
|
| Because even with hygiene products, people buy them before they
| need them and stock up. And with food, you're often shopping
| for a week and for the whole family. You put things on a
| shopping list and don't buy them the same day you're using
| them, or even the same week.
|
| I suspect that even if the manager _thought_ they could
| determine it, their actual "results" were entirely random.
| After all, how is he going to check? Call two hundred of the
| women and ask? Also, periods are irregular. They're not a
| perfect 28 days each time. They vary month to month.
|
| I don't doubt the manager _thought_ he was doing that. I doubt
| it actually worked at all, though.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| You think the data brokers aren't aware of varying spending
| habits? You might be surprised to learn the number of people
| living day-to-day, cheque-to-cheque who don't have the
| ability to stock up on much of anything. These are the
| consumers who are "ripe for the picking" in marketer's eyes.
| Back in the late 90's this would have been much harder too,
| probably working with not much more than cash register
| receipts.
| kstrauser wrote:
| From an advertising POV, isn't that even better? Then they'd
| know when to advertise to someone to increase sales.
|
| That is, the marketers wouldn't actually care about a woman's
| cycle, but at which points they could monetize it.
|
| (Good lord, I need a shower after just typing that.)
| titusjohnson wrote:
| > Because even with hygiene products, people buy them before
| they need them and stock up.
|
| One would think so, but in my experience this is not the case
| on average. Of the half-dozen long term relationships I've
| had, only 1 partner was ever prepared for the monthly
| inevitable. For everyone else it was always treated as a
| surprise. Suggesting to my current partner that she stock up
| on the products she just used was dismissed with an "oh I
| don't need that stuff for weeks".
|
| The trope of guys not wanting to go get tampons, or
| uncomfortably navigating the feminine hygiene isle, did not
| just appear out of nowhere.
| bluGill wrote:
| While I expect most women buy in advance, I expect they also
| don't buy enough and so are out there mid-period at least
| some of the time. Their cycles also affect their buying
| patterns, so even women who are stocking up are more likely
| to buy differently in different parts of the cycle.
|
| The real question is what does the manager do with the data.
| Across a city on any given day there are about the same
| number of women in every day of their cycle so it isn't like
| they are marking up pads on the 25th-28th day of the month to
| get women who didn't stock up. As such I don't think this
| data is useful, what is useful is when they discover a women
| missed her cycle and thus needs to get ads for pregnancy wear
| in a couple months. Since that is their need for data, the
| fact that it is noisy and not very accurate is still close
| enough.
|
| That said, they probably are more accurate than you would
| expect despite all the noise. Not 100% accurate, but being
| greater than 50% accurate is a lot better than chance and
| should be obtainable.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The real question is what does the manager do with the
| data._
|
| Direct-mail (or these days, in-app with notifications)
| coupons. If you know you'll pay full price at CVS, but it's
| 30% off at Rite-Aid, you'll go to Rite-Aid and buy other
| stuff as long as you're making the trip.
|
| I mean, maybe there really are enough women buying last-
| minute to be able to predict, at least for _those_ women --
| and identify who those women are.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So... the risk to women's safety is that they might end
| up paying less for hygiene products?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| No, the risk to women's safety is that someone the woman
| doesn't want to know, could find out that they're
| pregnant. (Or using birth control or whatever)
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Someone being an advertiser buying the data?
| macintux wrote:
| Someone being the government criminalizing miscarriages
| and abortions.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Actually yes.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
| targ...
| bluGill wrote:
| If that is your motivation you just blanket send those
| advertisements all month. Because you want women to think
| of you when they have need. Some women are stocking up
| before they have need, and so the coupon when they are
| having their period is when they won't be buying
| supplies. Even those who are buying as they have need, if
| they are out they are buying from the closest store at
| whatever price, while those who are not in an emergency
| know where the low prices are (wal-mart or such)
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Just knowing what is bought together with menstrual
| products can influence how they're marketed. It can
| influence where certain products are placed on shelves
| relative to menstrual products, where and how they're
| marketed, which brands in your conglomerate to co-market
| with, and so on. This is the most innocent use of data in
| aggregate. The real creepy shit follows now that it's
| individualized and easily deanonymized.
| wagwang wrote:
| You're making a lot of assumptions there. The guy probably
| had a training dataset with real cycle data and shopping data
| and went off of that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I am, but that's because this is 1998. Where would you ever
| get such a training dataset with real cycle data tied to
| shopping data? Menstrual tracking apps weren't a thing
| then. And any anonymized medical studies that actually did
| such tracking certainly couldn't have been correlated with
| identifiable shopping data, I would think.
| cgh wrote:
| I think the idea is that the cycle is inferred by
| analyzing purchasing data.
| aflag wrote:
| They don't care about your menstrual cycle. Advertisers want
| to predict your purchase pattern to better target you. So,
| what you said just reinforces the idea that using menstrual
| cycle data for placing ads is useful. Essentially using your
| body against yourself.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > And with food, you're often shopping for a week
|
| That's not how people shop here in Europe
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it's more about when to push than about what to push.
| Maybe there are specific types of products aside from what's
| obvious, or actions to take or not to take. Like avoiding
| discounts when customers are least likely to develop loyalty,
| maybe even how to rotate through choices of products like
| meats to vegs to dish soaps.
|
| By the way, I've seen self proclaimed male on social media
| posting how they use these trackers to predict their
| irresistible sushi cravings. Apparently, and contrary to
| intuition, men also have the cycle, just less obvious. Pelvis
| opening up and such.
| duxup wrote:
| Assuming purchase history has that clear a pattern (I'm
| doubtful) doesn't that mean that purchase history alone would
| ... what? Not be allowed? Because it could be used to determine
| other things?
|
| I'm not sure what consumer protections could really do much
| here if the pattern is obvious and the data exists.
| em-bee wrote:
| read up on that case. it clearly did have a pattern. that was
| no random guess.
|
| i never pay with card and i don't join any member programs to
| avoid creating a purchase history. pattern or not, a lot can
| be gleaned from what i buy.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| This theme of anecdote has been trotted out for more than a
| half century. In the 80's the yarn was that a supermarket could
| tell when a woman was pregnant before her doctor from her
| purchase patterns alone.
|
| To this date, no supermarket has ever produced this result - or
| any thematically similar.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Given recurring purchase subscriptions from Amazon Prime,
| perhaps this data is different from 27 years ago
| plastic_bag wrote:
| There's a FOSS alternative called Drip.
|
| https://dripapp.org/
|
| It is funded by Mozilla and Open Knowledge Foundation. Available
| on iOS and Android.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Mensinator is also another FOSS that uses no third party sdks
| and is reproducibly built for android, fairly actively used,
| and made by women. https://github.com/EmmaTellblom/Mensinator
| carstenhag wrote:
| As I had failed finding an app that was not ad-ridden or
| oldish, my girlfriend and I are using this (I am copying her
| values, to know when her period will be). Also contributing
| some code :)
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Can I ask why you use it? We used test strips - they're
| really cheap and way more accurate as women's bodies aren't
| clocks. That was effective for getting pregnant.
|
| Using anything except some kind of active measures to avoid
| pregnancy doesn't pass my engineer brain and certainly
| doesn't pass my wife's Pharmacologist brain (i.e. she
| actually knows what she's talking about whereas I'm using
| applied probability theory with assumptions).
| xandrius wrote:
| > Mozilla
|
| So they will end up killing it soon? /s
| sshine wrote:
| This gets downvoted for being negative, but it was my
| immediate reaction when I saw "Mozilla": They're axing
| projects that don't align for strategic reasons that probably
| make sense, but is simultaneously very Googly.
|
| Association with Mozilla is a cause for concern when
| considering the longevity of a project.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Sure, Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And
| Microsoft. Everyone does. Pruning is a healthy and expected
| part of running a business. So what? All software is
| temporary, given a long enough timeline, even gmail. It's a
| user's fault for expecting otherwise.
| tiahura wrote:
| The article doesn't explain how their safety is at risk.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Women do not have legal autonomy over their bodies in the US,
| and health data especially dealing with reproductive matters
| has been used to target individuals.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Did I miss the part where the data risks women's safety? I was
| particularly interested in that part of the headline, but I
| didn't see it detailed in the article.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Third paragraph:
|
| > The report's authors caution that cycle tracking app (CTA)
| data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects,
| workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and
| cyberstalking - and limit access to abortion.
|
| Did you miss it or are you disagreeing with these being a
| threat?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Or violence or even death. Certain cultures don't take to
| kindly to pregnancies outside marriage, or maybe the family
| disagree with the choice of partner. A cousin works for the
| app company, leaks the information about an unexpected
| pregnancy to a conservative father or uncle. Girls is shipped
| of to family back home and is tragically stabbed to death a
| few days after arriving.
|
| Most people who collect data of this type of data lacks
| imagination if they don't think it can be misused.
| jedimastert wrote:
| More likely they believe that because they only _collect_
| the information they aren 't culpable for what other people
| do with it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Good point about family violence threats. That wasn't in
| the article, but makes sense.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The cyberstalking is the most applicable, but I dont see what
| the menstral data would provide vs not having the mentstral
| data. A name and address could present a potential threat,
| but knowing which days someone is bleeding one doesn't seem
| to be useful in attacking someone unless you believe it makes
| them a weaker target or something.
|
| The others aren't about safety. The one about restricting
| abortion is a false attribution as the laws would be the
| thing actually restricting it, not the use of the app.
|
| I'm not saying the problems shouldn't be addressed, but
| claiming safety is at risk is a bit of a stretch.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > knowing which days someone is bleeding one doesn't seem
| to be useful in attacking someone unless you believe it
| makes them a weaker target or something.
|
| I have other things to say here but immediately this is a
| wildly gross and sexist way to phrase this.
|
| > The others aren't about safety
|
| > risks to job prospects, workplace monitoring, health
| insurance discrimination
|
| A threat to livelihood and proper health care is a threat
| to safety, and the fact that you don't recognize that
| should hopefully trigger some amount of self-reflection.
|
| Beyond that the fact that you can't make the really simple
| connection between knowing someone's menstrual cycle and
| knowing their pregnancy status means I _deeply_ hope you
| take some time to self-reflect and maybe consider that you
| don 't quite have the tools to engage in a nuance
| conversation about this and should instead take some time
| to listen to others
| giantg2 wrote:
| "A threat to livelihood and proper health care is a
| threat to safety, and the fact that you don't recognize
| that should hopefully trigger some amount of self-
| reflection."
|
| A threat to livelihood is not a direct threat to safety.
| If we take this indirect route of logic, it can be
| applied to anything. Furthermore, how is it a threat to
| livelihood? Don't we have protected statuses for pregnant
| women in employment law?
|
| "Beyond that the fact that you can't make the really
| simple connection between knowing someone's menstrual
| cycle and knowing their pregnancy status means I deeply
| hope you take some time to self-reflect and maybe
| consider that you don't quite have the tools to engage in
| a nuance conversation about this and should instead take
| some time to listen to others"
|
| I'm asking legitimate questions, but I'm getting
| emotional responses instead of logical ones. You're
| making implications here about menstrual vs pregnancy
| status but not forming an actual response about them.
| vinckr wrote:
| the most obvious is that abortions are illegal in the US and
| you can monitor that status through the app.
|
| So in extreme cases if you are pregnant and the baby is going
| to kill you, you aren't allowed to abort it - get an illegal
| abortion - woops the app spied on me and now you are in prison.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Elective abortions are illegal in some states. Even the most
| restrictive states, like those with six week bans, include
| exemptions for things like ectopic pregnancy and
| preeclampsia.
|
| Further, nationwide abortion rates are at an all-time high.
| The fall of Roe vs Wade has not moved the needle on that
| count.
| jedimastert wrote:
| More than just elective abortions, the ambiguity of the
| laws and serious threat to doctors are also preventing
| life-saving abortions
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/investigation-links-
| georgi...
| const_cast wrote:
| While the letter of the law is one thing, the other aspect
| we have to consider is the intentional chilling effects
| these laws introduce. Doctors and providers are
| understandably more much hesitant to administer abortions,
| even in circumstances where it would be legal.
|
| In highly restrictive states, the result is it's very
| difficult to get a doctor to stand by your abortion, even
| if you really need it. And, more concerning, some out-of-
| state doctors won't do it either, for fear of prosecution.
| States like Texas have demonstrated they intend to overstep
| and prosecute individuals getting abortions in other
| states.
|
| For doctors, it's a game of risk-reward. They need to
| balance their own personal safety and employment, as well
| as their medical license and reputation. Many have decided
| it's not worth the risk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I didn't really see laws as a threat to safety. While their
| enforcement can be, that train of thinking can be applied to
| anything. If you have a machine gun that isn't registered, is
| the app you took notes about it in a threat to your safety,
| or is it the law/enforcement? You can have people believe
| very strongly that abortion is a right or that owning an
| unregistered machine gun is a right. There may be implicit
| value based bias if we want to treat circumventing one
| scenario more favorably than circumventing another. At the
| heart of the issue, society/government is a threat to anyone
| who is breaking the law, which is implicitly how laws work.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > I didn't really see laws as a threat to safety.
|
| I'm going to lay off of responding to you after this, I
| know I've made a couple of responses and quick succession,
| but these laws are a threat to safety in that they are
| preventing women from getting life-saving medical
| attention. Here is one example but there are many
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/investigation-links-
| georgi...
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Probably the best one-liner fix in law I can think of, is to make
| it a imprisonable felony to give money to someone or an
| organization for the purpose of speaking a particular message as
| their own, and accepting money in exchange for speaking a message
| as your own. Basically ban advertising, or at least make each
| commercial basically say "General Motors has paid us to tell you
| that ... ... ..." instead of the sexy seductive style we have
| today. Ads, if they are to exist at all, should be limited to
| factual/quantitative statements about performance and
| reliability, and must not use any suggestive/qualitative
| statements. We need to make the various pillars of modern
| advertising criminal offenses: the main one is the use of
| psychological/memetic trickery to spread and make memorable a
| message for commercial purposes, then there's the financial
| incentive to shit up our cyberspaces with sponsored messages. The
| only place I should EVER EVER EEEVERRR find an advertisement for
| (say) a plumber, should be in the local directory for businesses
| under the plumbing section, and the list must be sortable and
| filterable by basic transparent criteria (no hidden magic feed
| algorithms).
|
| It is legal to swindle someone in this country, so long as they
| get swindled enthusiastically and don't think they got swindled.
| I think being induced to buy a hamburger at midnight by a well
| placed ad, instead of just reheating some left-overs, is a
| swindling even if your dependency on this model for your economic
| survival has you kneejerking on me! The goal is we all turn into
| self-sufficient economic agents, not be labor-cattle induced by
| advertising memes to go into interest bearing debt by a thousand
| little charges.
| duxup wrote:
| >"General Motors has paid us to tell you that ... ... ..."
|
| Are we under the impression that people don't know that?
|
| I think most people know what advertising is. I don't think
| that would change anything.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Very basic example nobody argues with. Did you know your
| local news station gets some stories to present as their own
| and they are paid to present them? You may, but many might
| find that to be a shocking revelation. I was maintaining
| cognitive accessibility in that example.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't think the news thing would surprise anyone either.
|
| I think there's a weirdly patronizing approach that blames
| so much on advertising, and if by chance if folks got their
| way they'd be astonished to find that people make bad
| choices all on their own, and they know they do ...
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I think it makes sense when people are quite literally
| inundated by ads. If you see a constant stream of
| advertisements, which thoughts are genuinely your own?
| What preferences would one have that haven't been
| massaged in a direction by ads?
| greenavocado wrote:
| I regret to inform you that the inmates run the asylum, so your
| proposal will go nowhere. Banning ads? Making Google confess
| 'We were paid to say this'? Forcing Burger King to admit
| they're tricking you into midnight cravings? Politicians funded
| by ads would outlaw that idea faster than you can say 'campaign
| donation'. Your felony-for-persuasion is bold. It's also
| delusional.
| mouse_ wrote:
| the chickens wish to be treated nicer by the factory farm
| infrastructure
|
| the factory farm infrastructure does not notice; it cannot
| notice
| freejazz wrote:
| >Probably the best one-liner fix in law I can think of, is to
| make it a imprisonable felony to give money to someone or an
| organization for the purpose of speaking a particular message
| as their own, and accepting money in exchange for speaking a
| message as your own.
|
| You think you can make a law like this work with one line? I do
| not get the code-as-law people, or whatever it is you are
| coming from that has left you with this impression. No surprise
| you are also advocating people become "self-sufficient economic
| agents" too. It's gotta be simple, right? That's why you gave
| us the one line, after all.
|
| "You don't actually want this cheeseburger, we are just telling
| you that you do" sounds like it would be a real buzzworthy
| campaign today to be perfectly honest. Do you leave your house?
| conover wrote:
| At least in the US, you are going to run into problems with the
| First Amendment (eg Central Hudson Test).
| wingspar wrote:
| Wouldn't that just restrict paid endorsements?
|
| General Motors making an ad campaign paying for broadcast does
| not equate to the station / channel endorsing a product.
|
| How about a plumbing company buys a billboard and puts an ad
| for their services on it?
|
| Pretty sure the courts would find this plan violates the first
| amendment too.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
| duxup wrote:
| The article doesn't define what exactly they mean by "risks women
| safety".
|
| I don't buy into the idea that all or any advertising is a
| "safety" issue if that is where they're going. I think there's a
| very weird type of patronizing that goes on where suddenly we
| fear for everyone's ability to deal with advertising as if
| they've got no self control or agency ...
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| A state like Texas being able to track a woman's period means
| they will know when she becomes pregnant or ceases to be
| pregnant. That's potential evidence of a felony in Texas. You
| connect the dots from there.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't buy into the idea that ANY possible evidence is a
| legitimate risk for being prosecuted when it would take a
| GREAT deal more than that to get to that point.
|
| Would flight info, rental car data, etc also contribute?
|
| Emails saved ...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A great deal more like for example a private cause of
| action bounty program and a clear & established commitment
| to using technological surveillance to pursue and punish
| people who have had abortions?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Heartbeat_Act
|
| https://www.the-
| independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/te...
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Why wouldn't email, flight info, rental car data, etc. also
| be contributing? You're aware of course that some states
| make traveling to get an abortion a crime? Idaho
| specifically?
|
| You're bandying about ideas when the people pushing this
| crap want a return to _chattel slavery_.
| tantalor wrote:
| Then the article should say that.
| SSLy wrote:
| Article is from a British source.
| xeonmc wrote:
| It means that they are snitching data to the reproductive
| gestapo.
| thombat wrote:
| The article notes that this data would reveal abortions or
| miscarriages, and that in some states this information is used
| as input for criminal prosecution.
| 93po wrote:
| Additionally, using implicit hormone levels to adjust the ads
| that people with menstruations see is uniquely predatory and
| manipulative. It also serves to "out" trans men when this
| data can be tied to a profile of someone who as chosen a non-
| female gender on other online platforms.
|
| Advertising by itself is directly harmful. Its secondary
| effects on the world are catastrophic. Adding a new layer of
| "this person is PMSing, let's give them makeup ads because
| they're feeling insecure" is just evil.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Advertising is what's justified our shiny new 1984 surveillance
| grid. Advertising is risking all our safety!
| yesfitz wrote:
| Third paragraph:
|
| "The report's authors caution that cycle tracking app (CTA)
| data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects,
| workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and
| cyberstalking - and limit access to abortion."
|
| If you want to trace the claims to their sources, you can read
| the full report from MCTD Cambridge here:
| https://www.mctd.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-High-S...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's not a secret that women of fertile age have periods.
|
| How knowing the _specific days_ could add all those risks is
| hard to see.
|
| I get why it's icky from a privacy standpoint.
| yesfitz wrote:
| The report has case studies and citations in the section
| "Individual Harms: Tracking Data used against Users":
| https://www.mctd.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-
| High-S...
|
| You can use those to determine the authors' claims and
| follow their sources to determine whether or not you accept
| those claims.
| const_cast wrote:
| One hypothetical vector is that you can find out which
| women aren't menstruating normally, meaning they could be
| pregnant. If that information makes it into the hands of
| employers or even recruitment platforms that can manifest
| as discrimination. Typically, women have to be incredibly
| careful not to give employers the impression they might be
| pregnant or might be trying to be pregnant.
|
| There's also angles of chronic illness, for example, you
| could maybe find out which women have PCOS or endometriosis
| and would therefore be more likely to request time off
| work.
|
| In general, we've worked very hard to make sure employers
| cannot find out this data, going so far as to make it
| explicitly illegal to ask, even in a voluntary disclosure
| context. But data tracking complicates the situation, and
| if there's enough convolution you can get real-world
| results without technically breaking the law. For example,
| consider RealPage, which uses data analytics to facilitate
| collusion in the renting market. When we introduce
| algorithms and heuristics into systems like hiring, we
| might unintentionally be using biases in the data against
| applicants.
| jajko wrote:
| One of reasons I am underwhelmed by all the smart sport watches.
| When eventually their DBs get hacked or they sell data willingly,
| I dont want my employer to see that I was running in the forest
| during lunch time, or my health insurance to see any circulatory
| anomaly if I had any.
|
| Fuck that, I will start ignoring that few years before
| retirement, not a second earlier. Its a shame, and I know people
| like me wont bend the direction we firmly head towards
| tartoran wrote:
| We detected an anomaly in your circulatory system. Your
| insurance premium has now been increased.
|
| Further advisory from BioMon Sentinel Node 7: Irregular
| fluctuations in hemodynamic integrity suggest low compliance
| with your prescribed wellness protocol. Molecular telemetry
| indicates caffeine saturation at 347% above neural-optimal
| threshold. Risk cluster escalation: Tier Sigma-4.
|
| Your vitals have been submitted to the Actuarial Nexus. A claim
| adjustment algorithm is currently rewriting your financial
| destiny.
| bluGill wrote:
| OTOH, my mom went to the doctors because her watch showed data
| that made no sense (aerobic exercise all day when she was at
| work - retail is not that much work), and that started the
| chain that eventually found her cancer early and thus it was
| more treatable and she in turn is alive.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| So each government should make a period cycle app and ban private
| companies from doing the same? Or the WHO should make the app?
| Clearly such laws will never be passed in every country. Is this
| any different from using a point card at a store and buying
| prenatal vitamins or a pregnancy test? Even a credit card has
| this type of purchase information, even if they claim not to
| share direct personal info to advertisers. I would say let users
| consent when they download an app and leave it in their hands to
| decide
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Ban all advertising on automatically collected data. Users who
| desire to may opt in by voluntarily providing information about
| themselves to get the most relevant ads. Apart from that, ads
| become targeting-free.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Pretty sure all the data for all targeted advertisement is
| automatically collected?
|
| When I search for things on AliExpress, and then later browse
| the Internet, it shows me ads for those things.
|
| Your solution sounds equivalent to banning all advertising on
| the Internet essentially when I do a Google search for
| something am I consenting to see ads for that thing?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Pretty sure all the data for all targeted advertisement
| is automatically collected?
|
| Sure is.
|
| > Your solution sounds equivalent to banning all
| advertising on the Internet
|
| Not at all. We made targeted advertising a central pillar
| of the Internet before we realized what that meant. We've
| normalized the notion of being spied on on the Internet at
| all times, but that's a choice we made (or perhaps didn't
| make) that can be remade.
|
| Every regulation on big business in the history of big
| business has been whined and bitched and complained about.
| Corporations swore they could never survive paying negroes
| the same as whites. Same for not being able to employ
| children. Same for being made to employ women and other
| minorities. On and on.
|
| Regulations get passed, society benefits. More often than
| not the corpos do too, even if they refuse to acknowledge
| it.
|
| Advertising, including online, existed long before
| targeting existed. It can exist again. I'm sure there will
| be pain but I have absolute faith in the tech industry,
| which employs most of if not all the best minds in my
| generation, to solve the problem. What they lack is a
| reason to.
|
| > essentially when I do a Google search for something am I
| consenting to see ads for that thing?
|
| ... yes?
|
| Edit: Also just like... you make it sound like there's NO
| WAY at ALL to "aim" your advertisements without a
| surveillance apparatus. It's ridiculous.
|
| * Recommendations based on purchase history: any given
| retailer can do this without running afoul of privacy
| regulations. Why not?
|
| * Contextual recommendations: Are you trying to sell drone
| parts? Cool, advertise on drone enthusiast forums and
| Facebook groups, and use the hashtags in other social media
| for those things.
|
| * Make Newsletters actually good: Put up a newsletter about
| your products. If it's quality work that doesn't hit my
| inbox EVERY SINGLE DAY, I would sign up for it.
|
| Like there are ways to advertise products in targeted ways
| without spying on people and creeping the fuck out of your
| potential customers. You just... treat them like people you
| have an ounce of respect for? Not sentient wallets you're
| trying to shake every last penny out of.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| So if I purchase prenatal vitamins, then it's OK if that
| retailer advertises to me assuming I am pregnant but if
| that retailer sells that information to another retailer
| now it it's a problem? Is that the short of it?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Yup! Easy, isn't it?
| mhluongo wrote:
| We've incubated a private, local-first menstrual tracking app!
|
| My partner is the founder. She's a PMDD sufferer who needed a
| proper, science-first tracker to treat her hormonal symptoms.
| After Roe, she didn't feel like she had any options but to build
| her own app -- Embody.
|
| We're getting ready for a security audit and to take it open
| source. Would love any feedback!
|
| https://embody.space
| wand3r wrote:
| While unlikely, I personally believe that advertising revenue
| should be taxed at 50%. This would do a lot to align industry
| incentives. Advertising revenue would be looked at less as a free
| cash stream that can be bolted on everywhere. In this case, maybe
| the app could be monetized directly instead of whatever the fuck
| is happening now.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Revenue isn't taxed. Profit is.
|
| I suppose you could tax a proportion of your profit at a higher
| rate, according to the proportion of your revenue that came
| from advertising.
|
| But advertising isn't a "free cash stream that can be bolted on
| everywhere". It's part of a business model that either is
| sustainable or isn't.
|
| If you taxed it that much higher, a lot of businesses would
| simply go out of business, because people aren't willing to pay
| a subscription instead. Especially businesses that survive on a
| lot of users who use something only occasionally. Is that
| really what you want? Think carefully about how much journalism
| would be even _further_ eroded...
| Smar wrote:
| There cpuld be harmful substance tax, akin to alcohol.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think in case of ad companies you could tax the revenue
| directly. They are strongly vertically integrated so there's
| really very little reason to track their profit rather than
| total sales.
|
| The only reason you tax profits rather than revenue is that
| you want to avoid killing businesses that do useful things
| why operating at low margins.
|
| Margins in advertising are huge and what those company do is
| pure detriment to all market actors on average.
| wand3r wrote:
| I understand that, and I kind if alluded to this being a
| concept less than a well thought out policy. If it was
| strictly profit, then all expenses of the business would be
| written against advertising and miraculously there would be 0
| profit. My general point is that advertising revenue is
| insanely easy to get, especially with auctions and technology
| from google. Some of the problems and perverse incentives: -
| negative engagement in media - advertising screens at gas
| stations - popups everywhere - hardware devices you own
| display ads - software you purchase has ads - streaming
| services you bought without ads have ads added later
|
| You all participate in society, so you get it. Advertising
| has become a tragedy of the commons and 2nd order effects are
| things like negative engagement and body dysmorphia. There
| needs to be a vice tax for advertisements to stop them from
| being bolted on everywhere. Lobbyists, smart policy makers,
| economists and lawmakers can come together to find the right
| mix. However, we should disincentivize it AND use it to make
| up for budget shortfalls.
| sdeframond wrote:
| > Revenue isn't taxed. Profit is
|
| What about VAT ?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Sales taxes are taxes on revenue, and they could certainly be
| advertisement-specific.
| timewizard wrote:
| I personally believe I should be able to install an ad blocker
| on my device and completely circumvent the problem.
|
| Why are we creating new economic loopholes? Why not just
| enforce the anti monopoly laws we currently have?
|
| If your advertising becomes to onerous you simply lose the
| channel altogether. That will quickly "realign" industry
| priorities.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| If you believe advertisement is bad why not just ban
| advertisement?
| grvdrm wrote:
| I didn't see any apps mentioned but my naive question for this
| space:
|
| Are there any subscription-only apps out there that don't
| advertise at all (in app) and if they do it is based entirely on
| anonymized broader categories rather than individual targeting?
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Only for advertisers that risk women's safety?
| cqwww wrote:
| At ConsentKeys.com we're already working on integrating with a
| menstrual tracking app (can't mention until the ink is dry), but
| we're a good fit for apps concerned with blow back like this as
| the apps that use us will never get the real personal information
| of the users in exchange for us offering to place them in our
| privacy centric marketplace (exposure) as well as de-risking
| themselves as a business, as well as de-risking their users from
| a data breach (or their information being sold/shared). Vendors
| also contractually agree to not try to assemble data in a way to
| try to identify their users as it makes no sense to use us unless
| you want to be privacy prioritized.
| upofadown wrote:
| A relevant f-droid search:
|
| * https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Menstrual
|
| All of the apps that showed up in the search store data locally.
| Why would anyone not want to store this sort of data locally?
| What is the advantage of sending the data off to a server
| somewhere?
| mschild wrote:
| Because your typical android user is not even aware of it and
| if they are they don't know or care enough to look for an
| alternative.
| carstenhag wrote:
| People have multiple devices, want to make the data available
| to their partners, etc. It's a legitimate but fragile use case.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I don't have hard data, but I think I'm correct in assuming
| that the overwhelming majority of F-Droid users don't
| menstruate
| stuaxo wrote:
| This category of app should absolutely be offline first.
|
| If the data is shared it needs to be controlled by the user every
| time and not in a way that automatically goes to advertisers.
| yumraj wrote:
| Curious does anyone know of a app/tool that can ingest a dump of
| your medical records, across platforms and EHR/EMRs and
| providers, and show it to you?
|
| Ideally this would be local, or self-hostable, and FOSS, but am
| still curious if it is not that.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| There is little to no standardisation in medical records. There
| is an International Patient Summary (IPS) which was based on
| the EU's version.
|
| That and the data itself is decentralised in systems which are
| designed to be inaccessible.
| brainzap wrote:
| You can track it in iOS without extra apps.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Can anyone tell me why this would be as much of a problem for
| safety as they are saying?
|
| The only thing I can see happening is easier selling of pads and
| tampons during a certain phase of the moon. Apparently this is
| what the article suggests too, that certain things are easier to
| sell at a certain point in the cycle.
|
| It'd be embarrassing if someone knew, not dangerous. And even
| that much feels weird to me for a very well known biological
| function.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| I think it becomes more an issue when you consider that in
| these apps, people likely also enter things like prescription
| medications they take, what kind of contraception they use, if
| any. Additionally, if this data is being sold to advertisers,
| and a user of the app becomes pregnant, it is possible that
| data could be used to determine that the user might be pregnant
| before they even know. This has the potential by itself to
| become an issue, especially for teens and in cultures where
| people take having sex outside of wedlock to extremes (as in
| responding violently to it) by starting to show that person and
| potentially their other family members on the same internet
| connection ads related to pregnancy/baby stuff
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > things like prescription medications they take, what kind
| of contraception they use.. determine that the user might be
| pregnant
|
| Those are PHI, and Google and other big companies wont dare
| to touch it with 10 foot pole.
|
| And the other part of your argument is so far into
| hypothetical space. Just because someone gets ads on certain
| thing doesn't mean the thing is real. These systems
| hallucinate all the time.
| prlambert wrote:
| Yes, it's not about the menstruation, it's about pregnancy.
| Having a kid, especially the 1st, is the single largest shift
| in consumer spending in most people's lives (if they have
| kids). Aside from all the obvious spending on baby stuff, it
| predicts buying a house and where they might live, and puts
| that person (new mother, in this case) on a well-modeled path
| of buying behavior for the next 18 years. Needs and spending as
| children age through different phases are quite predictable and
| the spending is huge and touches almost every aspect of the
| person's life.
| epanchin wrote:
| CNN: "A West Virginia prosecutor is warning women that a
| miscarriage could lead to criminal charges".
|
| A gap in periods followed by their resumption could
| theoretically be enough to lead to prosecution.
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