How to delete your period tracking app data - The Verge

After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, social media has been flooded with calls to delete period tracking apps. While period app data is unlikely to be the main evidence used in abortion cases, here’s how you can delete it.

Warnings to delete cycle tracking apps flooded social media in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end federal abortion protections. The data those apps contain, people feared, could be weaponized in court.

As abortion starts to be criminalized in parts of the country, fears around personal data aren’t unfounded. People who seek abortions in jurisdictions where it is now banned aren’t wrong to worry that their data could be used against them. But experts say that data from period tracking apps probably isn’t the biggest risk in a post-Roe landscape. People should be more worried about more mundane data — things like search history and text messages.

Even if they aren’t the primary weapons against people who might need abortions, period tracking apps do have sensitive information. These apps collect information on when people are in various stages of their menstrual cycle and can let people track things like PMS symptoms and sexual activity. Some offer to predict windows where people are most likely to become pregnant. The sheer volume of data can offer some insight into someone’s reproductive health. Theoretically, if they show someone stop menstruating for a few months and then start up again, it could hint that they may have had a pregnancy end.

And the apps, like most digital health devices, aren’t protected by medical privacy laws. The companies who make them have broad leeway to decide what to do with the information they collect. Even ones with firm privacy policies say that they’ll give information to law enforcement if they’re required to by a warrant or subpoena.

But so far, at least, period tracking app data hasn’t been used to prosecute people suspected of breaking laws criminalizing abortion or other health care. It is a possibility and one people should take seriously, Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technology fellow with the Ford Foundation’s gender, racial, and ethnic justice team, told The Verge. It’s unlikely, though, that it’d be the main form of evidence used against someone suspected of having an abortion.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/30/23190142/delete-period-tracking-app-roe-v-wade-how-to

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