If anyone is in need of a more secure option in these dystopian times: drip keeps all your data on your phone. You can export the data, so you can keep the tracked data when changing phones. I only use it for tracking my cycle and sometimes symptoms though, so I can’t say much about using it for birth control.
Apple’s Cycle Tracking app is also locally and E2E encrypted in iCloud.
When your phone is locked with a passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID, all of your health and fitness data in the Health app, other than your Medical ID, is encrypted. Any health data synced to iCloud is encrypted both in transit and on our servers. And if you have a recent version of watchOS and iOS with the default two-factor authentication and a passcode, your health and activity data will be stored in a way that Apple can’t read it.
This means that when you use the Cycle Tracking feature and have enabled two-factor authentication, your health data synced to iCloud is encrypted end-to-end and Apple does not have the key to decrypt the data and therefore cannot read it.
Sure. It’s encrypted. And your private data only stays on your device. Pinky swear.
With our 10 billion $ in ad revenue, you can trust that your data never makes it to a third party unencrypted 😚
I’m not sure what that license has to do with Apple’s privacy policy. Apple uses ML to place ads alongside relevant content. They provide no customer information to advertisers. They generate so much ad revenue by keeping a sizable 30% from the advertisers.
https://support.apple.com/guide/adguide/generate-revenue-apd51c721ca9/icloud
Is the app and the OS open source? No? Then please shut the fuck up with your dangerous “advice”. People really still havent understood how this shit works. How is this being upvoted? Corporations do not deserve your trust when they claim things without proving them.
This is not a joke, this shit affects peoples lives. After spearheading the technology for creeps to stalk people with physical tags, and being the first to experiment with client side communications scanning, how do people still not understand that apple is just as bad as the rest.
Apple is very clear how they make their money. Desirable products at high margins, free customer support, and an ecosystem that encourages the purchase of additional devices and services.
They have also been very clear about their commitment to privacy, and have consistently led the industry in customer-focused privacy software. It’s the primary reason many customers choose Apple over their competitors.
Realistically, why would Apple blow up a $3.3T global success for an extra $10M? That 1/330 of the company value. For comparison, Apple sells ~$54M in Apple Pencils every year.
For better E2E encryption, you should turn on Advanced Data Protection: https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756
I mean, the app offers encryption of the data, so you’d have to enter a password. And you can encrypt your phone as well. If it gets to a point where you are forced to enter the password, a piece of paper in your drawer is probably not much safer.
It’s really beyond fucked up that this is something people have to think about.
Why does a period tracking app even need to store the data anywhere other than locally?
their given reasons are “to keep backups” and “academic and clinical research with de-identified datasets”
they seem to actually do a fairly good job with anonymizing the research datasets, unlike most “anonymized research data”, though for the raw data stored on their servers, they do not seem to use encryption properly and their security model is “the cloud hoster wouldn’t spy on the data right?” (hint: their data is stored on american servers, so the american authorities can just subpoena Amazon Web Services directly, bypassing all their “privacy guarantees”. (the replacement for the EU-US Privacy Shield seems to be on very uncertain legal grounds, and that was before the election))
De-identified data is an oxymoron. Basically any dataset that’s in any way interesting is identifiable.
no it’s not. If you reduce the information in the datapoints until none of them are unique, then it is very obviously impossible to uniquely identify someone from them. And when you have millions of users the data can definitely still be kept interesting
(though there’s pretty big pitfalls here, as their report seems to leave open the possibility of not doing it correctly)
dude, phones have built-in functions to transfer data seamlessly, i helped my dad with that a while back and it amounts to pressing some buttons and putting the phones on top of each other…
if that’s too difficult i think you need a personal assistant.
You can what?! I’ve been using a USB drive…
Not that I’m complaining, the USB is easy enough, but of what wizardry do you speak?
Why are you being so condescending?
Phones get lost, stolen, damaged beyond repair. I knew a woman whose phone fell into a body of water on vacation and couldn’t be recovered.
When you have an app used by millions of people, which they depend on for tracking wellness, health issues, reproductive planning, etc. it makes sense to have a cloud backup for those inevitable situations.
Also yes, not everyone knows how to initiate an NFC file transfer, or even how to navigate their phone’s file system to select the data to transfer. You often have to develop software to the lowest common denominator. There’s open source options like Mensinator for people who want more control and privacy, but most software on the app store is targeted at less technical people.
Why in the fuck would the government need this information?
When they start prosecuting women for miscarriages and suspected abortions under Trump’s national abortion ban.
That’s not a need, that’s a want. The government doesn’t get to do whatever they want.
Literally on video saying he doesn’t want a national abortion ban, but now they are going to take data from period apps? Even the pro lifers aren’t this unhinged.
For a guy who doesn’t want a ban he seems awfully proud of overturning roe vs Wade. There’s literally only one reason to do that
Why else would he overturn it?
Why else would he keep claiming people are aborting after birth lol.
I think I know how he won now. I’m Australian and it turns out even I’ve been paying better attention than you
dystopian hellscape where government has an algorithm to check whether your period has come in a given month, and if you’ve missed more than a few weeks, you’ll be listed as pregnant. And then if you’re not pregnant anymore for any reason other than giving birth, then you’ll be prosecuted for having an abortion.
That’s nice, but why does that data need to be on their servers in the first place?
Ok, so apparently they don’t store the data by default. Guessing they could if the user wants it backed up or synced across devices.
I imagine they collect data to improve their algorithm so it can more accurately predict a woman’s cycle. Quite a few women use these apps as an alternative birth control, so knowing the specific days where they need to avoid sex is helpful.
Normally, I’d install the app to find out, but I can’t really install any more apps on my phone. And oh man, do I never like seeing the phrase “collect data to improve [their] algorithm”.
In general, medical predictions are a very good example of using AI to benefit humanity, not just shareholders. It’s still scary if it’s done by a private company.
Any woman on here, please consider bluemoon. My wife is tech illiterate but loves the app.
Bluemoon (Open source, privacy friendly menstruation tracking app. Your period, your data!) https://f-droid.org/packages/ch.nilsgrob.android.bluemoon/
I can recommend Mensinator. It includes logging and calculated ovulation day too. Something I could not see in bluemoon screenshots.
