14 ms·

Menstruation Apps Are Sharing Users' Data

277 points by 0xmohit 7y ago

H8crilA 7y ago
What are menstruation apps useful for? Is it a part of the "track everything about your health" trend?
- svachalek 7y ago
  Among other things, trying to increase/decrease chances of pregnancy.
- mturmon 7y ago
  Many uses. Why do people check the weather before deciding whether to pack an umbrella?
- diegoperini 7y ago
  Whether you are late?
- 1123581321 7y ago
  It really helps with conception/contraception. It also alerts you to changes in your health. Typically you’re tracking temperature, mucus consistency, cervix properties and menstruation. The way it converges into one stat (fertility window) and also potentially assists with a variety of other health areas is very cool. Going beyond that, we use Kindara and see a lot of women turning it into a generic key-value habit/mood/reminder tracker with emojis, etc. So it has value beyond just health.
- johnny313 7y ago
  There are a lot of reasons, including as an indicator of overall health. > “Changes to your cycle, or abnormalities—like irregular or heavy bleeding, or severe pain—can all signal issues that benefit from medical evaluation,” says Rashmi Kudesia, MD, reproductive endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Houston Methodist. “If something suddenly changes with your cycle, or your period is late, you may not realize it right away it if you’re not keeping track.” > If you do keep track, it will be easier to head to your gynecologist if funky stuff starts happening—and easier for them to find out what's going on. Dr. Kudesia also mentions tracking your cycle can be helpful in pinpointing your fertility window and making small lifestyle changes around the time of your period (scheduling extra downtime to combat your low energy, or being mindful of your eating habits when your cravings are in full swing). [0] [0] https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/g26787041/best-period-tracking-apps/ https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/g26787041/best-period...
  - hunterjumper06 7y ago
    Gynecologists ask for your period history including how heavy it is. It’s helpful for them to know when you plan on starting or switch birth control methods. They always ask for the last date/length of your period. I’m lucky if I remembered what I had for lunch much less when I last needed a tampon.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  They’re often used for predicting your next cycle or for fertility planning. Just to satisfy my curiosity, are you female?
- dabbledash 7y ago
  Most people using menstrual trackers will be trying to get pregnant, which is potentially pretty valuable info for advertisers. Also, for people with irregular cycles, knowing when you (probably) ovulated can help you predict when you’ll start bleeding. Compared to most health tracking, tracking your menstrual cycle gives you clearly actionable info.
  - bluntfang 7y ago
    >Most people using menstrual trackers will be trying to get pregnant, which is potentially pretty valuable info for advertisers New and expecting parents might be the most valuable demographic, period.
    - HarryHirsch 7y ago
      In America, where childbirth can easily come with a five-figure price tag, and where half of the people don't have 500 dollars to their name?
      - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        But look at all these new credit card offers available!
      - mtnGoat 7y ago
        this is a strange cross roads. isn't it? my wife gave birth 18 months ago, we have good insurance and a lot of family that gave us a lot of stuff we needed as gifts. without that we would easily be on the very upper end of the 5 figures by now.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Upper end of 5 figures is somewhere more than $50,000. Unless you went to an out of network hospital, and the kid ended up in the NICU, I doubt the total would be that high.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  If there was EVER any doubt about the demographics of HN... Let this be a lesson to everyone that we work and live in a massive bubble.
  - cocoa19 7y ago
    Why don't you explain him rather than demonizing him in front of all HN audience. Treat others as you'd like to be treated.
    - AWildC182 7y ago
      Plenty of other people already explained. I decided to leverage this as a teaching moment.
      - H8crilA 7y ago
        Thank you for the kind lesson. I genuinely didn't know.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - dabbledash 7y ago
      I agree that ignorance of other peoples’ experiences isn’t a blameworthy thing. But it does demonstrate one reason diversity is important. A smart person acting in good faith can miss things that are completely obvious to people with different life experiences. We all only know what it’s like to be us.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      It's such a basic question that it would be better to do an internet search or read the wikipedia article on the topic. You might as well ask why heart attacks are a big deal.
      - H8crilA 7y ago
        I might as well ask what are heart attack apps useful for. I wouldn't know what are heart attacks apps for.
- 80mph 7y ago
  If you have an autoimmune disease, it helps greatly to know when your estrogen and progesterone levels are highest as they both impact the immune system.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Before the app, there was the red felt-tipped pen kept next to the paper calendar. One has to know when to carry additional supplies beyond the gifter spare and the emergency personal reserve tampons. And when to wear different underwear. And when not to schedule dates. And when to buy chocolate. And when pregnancy is more likely. And when pregnancy is less likely. And when to eat liver. And when to buy analgesics. And when to make travel plans and hotel reservations, and when to not go anywhere for any reason.
  - mtnGoat 7y ago
    ok the eating liver part caught me... i don't know that part. fill me in?
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Iron?
    - bsder 7y ago
      Protein, iron, and B-complex vitamins. All extremely useful to replenish lost blood.
      - flukus 7y ago
        You only lose ~80ml of blood. When you donate to the blood bank your giving ~500ml and I've never heard of anyone recommending liver, other than not having an empty stomach there's no special dietary changes necessary. Am I missing something?
        mtrower 7y ago
        I can't speak directly to your given values, and am unfortunately in a poor position to research them. However, different women have different experiences. Some suffer from anemia and/or iron deficiency during their cycle. Perhaps this information will be useful?
        7y ago
- eb0la 7y ago
  In the old world (tm) women used to have a diary/agenda/calendar and tracked it there. The trend is not "track everything": if you have an idea that makes women carry less stuff with them, I assure you there is a market. their bags. Data from those apps is really valuable from a marketing perspective. The case with least value is selling it to P&G or whoever just to track how much market share do they have. If you put a tracker on it (facebook, for example) you can build a custom audience on top of it and promote/sell whatever you want related to reproductive healt and/or sexuality. Not just women. You could be a little evil and sell women tampons before they have menstruation. You could be evil and build a custom Facebook audience with users from your app and make money selling them stuff using a retargeting bid (since they are part of your audience). Or you could be very evit and target partners of women whe ceased to use your app for more than, say, 3-4 months and show ads for DNA paternity tests (which you don't sell, but someone else does and gives a referral fee for it). Or you could have very, very evil and build an audience around partners of women who might be pregnant, capture the clicks to build another audience (this time yours) and sell porn, tinder, dating/e-whoring, and divorce advice for a fee. Will work because this is a retargeting list (you already marked them as your customers, so bidding will be low for the ads).
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Advertisers can sure be creepy can't they. Maybe FB audiences should be made public, or you're told if you're in one. It seems a lot more invasive than other Ads software I've looked into (from the perspective of what you could do).
  - jakear 7y ago
    Might be missing something here, but why would women who might be pregnant be a particularly valuable audience for porn sites, tinder, etc?
    - mtrower 7y ago
      Not the women - their partners.
      - 7y ago
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  Because lots of weird shit happens to women. Pregnant or not? Maybe your hormones aren't right - one of the signs is usually change in monthly cycle. Whenever you have to go to the doctor for pap smears and so on, the doctor asks about it. For some folks, their weight determines their cycle length - too much or too little fat can change fertility. Perhaps you get really, really bad PMS (PMDD) and need to take anti-depressants around 2 weeks before the beginning of your cycle. And more, I'm guessing. I just can't think of another example right now, but in any case, monthly cycles are a big indicator of health issues and can be a great help with life issues as well.
- RichardCA 7y ago
  A lot of dudes keep track of their girlfriend's periods, because every month there is one "safe" weekend where you can have unprotected sex and get away with it. This is sometimes called the "Rhythm Method" or "Fertility Awareness" and a lot of men have self-interested reasons for wanting to know this about a woman. There is a history of apps optimized for this purpose. Some wholesome for married couples to use, and some for skeezy bachelors who want to track multiple women. https://gizmodo.com/iamaman-period-tracking-iphone-app-for-sleazy-shameles-5120556 https://gizmodo.com/iamaman-period-tracking-iphone-app-for-s... https://jezebel.com/another-innovative-menstrual-tracker-app-5513504 https://jezebel.com/another-innovative-menstrual-tracker-app...
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    > and some for skeezy bachelors who want to track multiple women Isn't this crazy - the amount of work people would put in just to have occasional unprotected sex. People are animals.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      It's not crazy. Sex is one of the most fundamental and powerful desires we have. What's actually crazy, in a mostly positive way, is how much control we've managed to achieve over it at individual and social level.
    - marvin 7y ago
      > People are animals Well, yes, we're really just pretending otherwise. Also agree with TeMPOralL's sentiment :)
  - bakuninsbart 7y ago
    Wowowow, isn't it like 10 days that are safe? I might be in very risky territory here.
    - tremon 7y ago
      Within the span of ten days, you can be sure there is at least one weekend.
- novia 7y ago
  Prediction. Menstruation apps are useful for prediction. Don't want to bleed all over the office furniture at work? It might be useful to have an idea of when you will start bleeding.
- froindt 7y ago
  Because of the monthly hormone cycle, women can have a difficult time getting taken seriously at the doctor. "Your hormone levels are shifting, that's probably why you're experiencing _symptom_". If you can show it happens throughout the month, and you have specific data relating whatever symptoms you're experiencing with your cycle, you're a lot more likely to actually get treated for the aliment.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    Excuse me but what kind of an idiot doctor doesn't know what menstruation is or what it can potentially cause? And you really need to show him an app for that instead of just saying it happens every period? I'd rather change a doctor to someone who didn't sleep through their medical school...
    - BigJ1211 7y ago
      This unfortunately seems to be rather common (at least in the US), John Oliver did an episode on it a short while ago. It has a lot to do with the history of the medical field as opposed to modern Mal-intent. For example a lot of testing was done on men and then that data was taken and also used for women. If you search for "John Oliver medical bias" you'll find the video.
- astura 7y ago
  If a woman is trying to conceive it could be helpful to predict her fertility window using menstrual cycle tracking. Same with if she were trying NOT to conceive (so-called "natural family planning") Doctors ask you if you have a regular cycle, the only way to know that is to track your cycle. If you're having some sort of issue with your reproductive organs you may track your cycle for a few months to try to better pin down the issue.
- wodenokoto 7y ago
  Cycles aren't regular, so just adding an event every 27th day in your calendar, won't be of much use to a lot of women. These apps can get quite good at predicting irregular cycles. Some apps will give users warnings of the type "PMS starts tomorrow, expect moodswings", or "expect extreme tiredness" and for people who are heavily affected by their period, this can be a big help in controlling their feelings or just understand their well-being.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  As a dude, I use it to track my mood / fatigue for lifting which worked OK.
mirimir 7y ago
What ever happened to the idea of local storage? And yeah, I know, income. This is one reason I hate smartphones and apps.
- MBCook 7y ago
  That’s how Apple Health works, and it will gain this feature in a week or so.
HarryHirsch 7y ago
What happened to the idea of paper? There are no concerns about privacy, and data are easily exported via photocopy.
- skyyler 7y ago
  Paper gets wet. Some critters like to eat paper. Paper burns. Paper has weight. Paper has volume. If you leave your papers at home, you can't easily access them by logging in on someone else's papers. Photocopying seems analogous to copying files at first, but consider the costs of photocopying something. In addition to the expensive machine, you need paper and toner...
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    > Paper burns. It shreds too. This is a feature.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      And bits can be zeroed just as much as paper can shred.
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        Bits are a hell of a lot more fickle. I can't ever know for sure what will happen to my data that thousands of companies have harvested online about me, even if I ask every one of them to delete it all. I can't have machine learning algorithms run on my paper to target me ads, either.
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    Paper needs no battery. Paper needs no network coverage (not Wi-Fi) Weights compared: iPhone 6 4.55 ounces Paper notebook (example) 3 ounces Summing up the risks of flood+fire+critters you have a fraction of the risk for "falling to ground and break screen"+theft+malfunctioning. You'll need a pen or pencil, though.
- 7y ago
autoexec 7y ago
People should really just assume every scrap of data they input into their phones is being sent to at least one company who will happily sell it to anyone who asks. Never use your phone for anything you wouldn't be happy with being publicly known and associated with you forever. That's not what our devices should be, but that's the reality we live in. These devices aren't for us, they are to enable other companies to use us.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > People should really just assume every scrap of data they input into their phones is being sent to at least one company who will happily sell it to anyone who asks. There are a number of apps that don’t let this information leave your device at all, or end-to-end encrypt it. You just have to find them.
  - ben509 7y ago
    And then hope they don't get new management.
    - jraph 7y ago
      Don't hope. Don't guess. Use apps from F-Droid. There is still a risk at the app level but it is much lower. On iOS, there is no such thing so you can't do that. At the phone level, there are still opaque binary blobs, so don't trust blindly.
  - ryanmcbride 7y ago
    While true, assuming that they could access and sell your data if they wanted to is still a good rule to follow, as it'll make you more cautious.
  - grecy 7y ago
    Just wait till someone with very deep pockets buys them. i.e WhatsApp
    - 7y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
From https://compliancy-group.com/hipaa-fines-directory-year/ https://compliancy-group.com/hipaa-fines-directory-year/ "The federal fines for noncompliance are based on the level of perceived negligence found within your organization at the time oft he HIPAA violation. These fines can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation (or per record), with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per year for each violation. View our HIPAA fines chart below for the full HIPAA fines list." And on the same page, according to the HIPAA Violation Penalty Tiers, the fourth and worse tier is "The covered entity acted with willful neglect and failed to make a timely correction". I bet if these companies got sued for $50,000 per person using them who had their data leaked to facebook, it would get everyone's attention really quickly.
- pixelbath 7y ago
  When writing medical software, HIPAA was an ever-present monster forcing me to consider all potential ways we'd be under a company-ending event. Once your fine totals exceed $100,000, you're required to issue a press release detailing how bad the damage is, in addition to the fines that stack for each violation (each patient's record would be considered one "violation"). I'm surprised any company keeping health information would be willing to sell that data without extensive legal protection, whether or not that data is protected explicitly under HIPAA. Seems to me like this should be treated like any other PHI breach.
  - zik 7y ago
    What about those DNA companies that collect even more sensitive medical information - your DNA - and then straight up sell it to companies who'll use it against you (health insurance)? Why are these guys not facing billions in fines and being dissolved for egregious violations? Edit: It seems that none of these are HIPAA violations because these companies aren't classified as medical organisations.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      They wouldn't be subject to HIPAA, but they would be subject to GINA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimination_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrim...
swiley 7y ago
ALL the apps are sharing your data. If it didn't come from f-droid or you can't compile it yourself you absolutely can't trust it. (even then you still need to be very carefull, just look at what goes on in npm.) A good number of closed source apps are pathological attacks on both your OS and the public mind, using them is defintitely one of the less responsible things you can do.
fortran77 7y ago
Do they really need that photo? I find that to be in poor taste.
- jedberg 7y ago
  A melting popsicle?
  - lucasmullens 7y ago
    It's alluding to menstrual bleeding. A delicious food looking like period blood I think can fairly be described as "poor taste".
    - novia 7y ago
      Can we get over the menstruation stigma already? The article is about menstruation tracking apps. You guys shouldn't be shocked by imagery alluding to menstruation in such a context.
      - chooseaname 7y ago
        I iMessaged the link to the article to my SO. She said the image was in poor taste and deleted the message. So, there's that.
      - egdod 7y ago
        I'm over the stigma. But it's still a private bodily function, and I still think it's in poor taste. It adds nothing to the article--it's just there for shock value/entertainment. Imagine if this were an article about... I dunno, an app that finds cheap toilet paper near your zip code. Would it be laudable if it included a picture of a smeary piece of melted chocolate?
        novia 7y ago
        This isn't an app for locating menstrual supplies. It is an app for predicting when your metaphorical popsicle will melt.
michelinman 7y ago
Back in 1988 I wrote a holiday/sick calendar app with basic reporting. The first thing management in EVERY department did was predict the sick days. I found that out 5 years after I had left.
- copperx 7y ago
  How did they predict sick days? A statistical model?
matahwoosh 7y ago
Very recently there was a flurry of articles about Apple copying popular apps, among them woman health apps [1]. Although they were not wrong to voice their concerns about Apple, it's hard to cheer for the app makers when you later find out they don't exactly value your privacy and are not upfront with you, as a user, about that. [1] washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses-its-app-store-copy-best-ideas EDIT: language
- m463 7y ago
  A more straightforward way of doing this is not to copy the app and make it more private... It would be to allow you to see what the apps are doing, and prevent them from doing what you don't approve of. Including apple apps. It could be as simple as: prevent this app from using the network.
  - camhenlin 7y ago
    The problem I see with that is that many (most?) users are not going to go deny network access to each app. Furthermore, what if the app tells me that it needs network access to get calendar info or something along those lines - and then actually uses the network for that -, then subsequently uses the network access to siphon off my personal info? Certainly if you had the ability to "see" what an app is doing, you might be able to catch that, but that's well beyond the grasp of most users. Better to be able to inherently trust the app because it was built by a trusted 3rd party. Certainly I agree that it would be nice to be able to disable network access to any app I felt like though.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Only for 3rd party keyboards, network access is denied by default. First you have to go through settings to enable them instead of a simple dialog box (which I agree with) and then you have to go back in settings to give the keyboard network access and you get a very clear warning. But, most people on HN don’t seem to understand Apple’s priorities. This is how it should be. 1. Apple 2. Users . . . . 3. Developers.
bound008 7y ago
For those bringing up HIPAA I hate to let you know that none of these apps are covered by HIPAA, and none of them can be fined under HIPAA. If your friend tells you they have a disease, and you tell someone else, are you breaking HIPAA? No. In order to break HIPAA you have to first be a covered entity. An example of a covered entity is a Doctor (or provider). If you tell Google or Facebook that you have some kind of condition, that information is not covered by HIPAA because they are not a medical provider, and therefore have no legal obligation to keep that information private.
- freedomben 7y ago
  Thank you. I have an app idea that I wondered if would be regulated by HIPAA. It's not going to share data, but it's always good to know what regulations apply. source for what OP is talking about: https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
  - bound008 7y ago
    This is a great resource. Especially the key points > The Privacy Rule applies only to covered entities. Many organizations that use, collect, access, and disclose individually identifiable health information will not be covered entities, and thus, will not have to comply with the Privacy Rule.
- baddox 7y ago
  That's interesting. When I was in college I worked tech support for the residence halls, and we went through what I remember to be a short HIPAA compliance program in case we encountered any medical information while servicing another student's computer. Perhaps that was just a (reasonable) precautionary policy of the university rather than a strict legal requirement under HIPAA. Or perhaps I'm simply misremembering, and it was some other compliance program other than HIPAA.
  - godelski 7y ago
    If you're servicing a computer that person isn't exactly sharing that information with you. Well, probably not intentionally.
api 7y ago
I assume that virtually all mobile apps are sharing your data. That's the entire business model of mobile: offer a "free" service as a pretext to get an app onto the phone and then spy on the user as much as possible. It's part of why I avoid apps whenever possible. I only install an app if it's a service I really need and there is no other way to use it, e.g. via the web. Web sites can still track but they can't suck location data, sensor data, etc.
MBCook 7y ago
iOS 13 will be out in a week or so with this feature built in. Hopefully that will put an end to at least some of this shady market.
chooseaname 7y ago
Lead image is in pretty poor taste; so I was just told by a female. Aside from that, what developer thinks, "Hmmm, I need to add analytics, let me see what FaceBook has to offer?" Seriously?
- orasis 7y ago
  If you’re doing ads on Facebook you have to use the SDK to optimize for in app actions.
- yesbabyyes 7y ago
  An aside, but I see this a lot on HN: > so I was just told by a female. What does "female" connote (not a native speaker)? To me, and translated into my language, it sounds like you're talking about a pet, a dog or some other animal. "Oh, it's a female". Translating it to eg Swedish or French, it sounds really weird, whereas the respective word for "woman" would sound normal. Is it different in English, or is this more a quirk of this forum/certain subcultures?
  - timthorn 7y ago
    No, it sounds weird in UK English too, unless as an adjective applied to a larger ungenered group. Eg "My female colleagues" sounds fine, as does "a woman I work with"
    - yesbabyyes 7y ago
      Thanks, that's pretty much how I would express myself in English. In Swedish, the words for "manly" and "womanly" ("manlig"/"kvinnlig") can be used for that ("my manly colleagues" would typically be understood as the men among my colleagues, rather than the most bearded/musky/etc among them). Now let's hear from a US English native!
      - mtrower 7y ago
        U.S. English native. This ("a female") sounds just fine to me. My friends or I might talk this way amongst ourselves(and no, I'm not talking about an all-male, socially mal-adjusted circle of friends). It's not what you'd call 100% standard mainstream English, but it's no so far outside the norm that I'd think twice about it either. While it's probably not how I'd teach a non-native to speak, I definitely wouldn't read anything into its use here, either. Chalk it up to subculture, I suppose, as suggested earlier.
OrgNet 7y ago
who's horny
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    can't you tell who's the horniest using their period cycles?
microcolonel 7y ago
What are the essential features in these applications, are they not working on standardized methods? There's one on F-Droid which probably isn't selling your period, so if they're mostly similar, maybe that's an option.
malicioususer11 7y ago
my vagina my choice. :)
triggercut 7y ago
"You are being shown this ad because: - assumptions made probably by men"
manpandalion 7y ago
Do they synchronize the data? xD
ragerino 7y ago
I got myself a connected electric toothbrush and body balance. After I found out that tracking the weight and my tooth brushing habits only works if I share the data with a central server, I now basically have a regular electric toothbrush and body balance.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Not only you have to sync it through their server but you probably also need to go through their specific app or website to read the data back. And sometimes they don't even have a way to download the historical records if you want to archive them or process them yourself. I find tracking weight still invaluable so I get along with it but was also disappointed to learn I needed to send everything their way. I wonder if it would possible/legal to intercept the requests from the device and route them to a local server implementing the same API endpoints.
LeoNatan25 7y ago
There was an article about how Apple was killing third party menstruation apps with iOS 13 because it is now built into the health app. This is why you want the OS to do it, rather than “start” “up” crapwares that sell data.
- WA 7y ago
  I agree. Especially all the menstrual health apps seem to be insane data grabbers. This should be something that belongs to a trusted company. However, the cycle tracking capabilities of iOS 13 are fine as a replacement for simple menstrual cycle trackers, but it's too simple to replace more sophisticated cycle trackers that also allow to track more body signals such as the temperature.
- lancepioch 7y ago
  I may be wrong, but I think that it's completely encrypted and that Apple couldn't even access it without your password. I can't say I'm a huge fan of being locked into the ecosystem, however I am relieved to hear that my privacy is actually cared for.
aguzzi94 7y ago
Bad news for the soy boys!

277 points by 0xmohit 7y ago

H8crilA 7y ago

What are menstruation apps useful for? Is it a part of the "track everything about your health" trend?

svachalek 7y ago
Among other things, trying to increase/decrease chances of pregnancy.
mturmon 7y ago
Many uses. Why do people check the weather before deciding whether to pack an umbrella?
diegoperini 7y ago
Whether you are late?
1123581321 7y ago
It really helps with conception/contraception. It also alerts you to changes in your health. Typically you’re tracking temperature, mucus consistency, cervix properties and menstruation. The way it converges into one stat (fertility window) and also potentially assists with a variety of other health areas is very cool. Going beyond that, we use Kindara and see a lot of women turning it into a generic key-value habit/mood/reminder tracker with emojis, etc. So it has value beyond just health.
johnny313 7y ago
There are a lot of reasons, including as an indicator of overall health. > “Changes to your cycle, or abnormalities—like irregular or heavy bleeding, or severe pain—can all signal issues that benefit from medical evaluation,” says Rashmi Kudesia, MD, reproductive endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Houston Methodist. “If something suddenly changes with your cycle, or your period is late, you may not realize it right away it if you’re not keeping track.” > If you do keep track, it will be easier to head to your gynecologist if funky stuff starts happening—and easier for them to find out what's going on. Dr. Kudesia also mentions tracking your cycle can be helpful in pinpointing your fertility window and making small lifestyle changes around the time of your period (scheduling extra downtime to combat your low energy, or being mindful of your eating habits when your cravings are in full swing). [0] [0] https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/g26787041/best-period-tracking-apps/ https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/g26787041/best-period...
- hunterjumper06 7y ago
  Gynecologists ask for your period history including how heavy it is. It’s helpful for them to know when you plan on starting or switch birth control methods. They always ask for the last date/length of your period. I’m lucky if I remembered what I had for lunch much less when I last needed a tampon.
saagarjha 7y ago
They’re often used for predicting your next cycle or for fertility planning. Just to satisfy my curiosity, are you female?
dabbledash 7y ago
Most people using menstrual trackers will be trying to get pregnant, which is potentially pretty valuable info for advertisers. Also, for people with irregular cycles, knowing when you (probably) ovulated can help you predict when you’ll start bleeding. Compared to most health tracking, tracking your menstrual cycle gives you clearly actionable info.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  >Most people using menstrual trackers will be trying to get pregnant, which is potentially pretty valuable info for advertisers New and expecting parents might be the most valuable demographic, period.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    In America, where childbirth can easily come with a five-figure price tag, and where half of the people don't have 500 dollars to their name?
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      But look at all these new credit card offers available!
    - mtnGoat 7y ago
      this is a strange cross roads. isn't it? my wife gave birth 18 months ago, we have good insurance and a lot of family that gave us a lot of stuff we needed as gifts. without that we would easily be on the very upper end of the 5 figures by now.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Upper end of 5 figures is somewhere more than $50,000. Unless you went to an out of network hospital, and the kid ended up in the NICU, I doubt the total would be that high.
AWildC182 7y ago
If there was EVER any doubt about the demographics of HN... Let this be a lesson to everyone that we work and live in a massive bubble.
- cocoa19 7y ago
  Why don't you explain him rather than demonizing him in front of all HN audience. Treat others as you'd like to be treated.
  - AWildC182 7y ago
    Plenty of other people already explained. I decided to leverage this as a teaching moment.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      Thank you for the kind lesson. I genuinely didn't know.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dabbledash 7y ago
    I agree that ignorance of other peoples’ experiences isn’t a blameworthy thing. But it does demonstrate one reason diversity is important. A smart person acting in good faith can miss things that are completely obvious to people with different life experiences. We all only know what it’s like to be us.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    It's such a basic question that it would be better to do an internet search or read the wikipedia article on the topic. You might as well ask why heart attacks are a big deal.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      I might as well ask what are heart attack apps useful for. I wouldn't know what are heart attacks apps for.
80mph 7y ago
If you have an autoimmune disease, it helps greatly to know when your estrogen and progesterone levels are highest as they both impact the immune system.
logfromblammo 7y ago
Before the app, there was the red felt-tipped pen kept next to the paper calendar. One has to know when to carry additional supplies beyond the gifter spare and the emergency personal reserve tampons. And when to wear different underwear. And when not to schedule dates. And when to buy chocolate. And when pregnancy is more likely. And when pregnancy is less likely. And when to eat liver. And when to buy analgesics. And when to make travel plans and hotel reservations, and when to not go anywhere for any reason.
- mtnGoat 7y ago
  ok the eating liver part caught me... i don't know that part. fill me in?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Iron?
  - bsder 7y ago
    Protein, iron, and B-complex vitamins. All extremely useful to replenish lost blood.
    - flukus 7y ago
      You only lose ~80ml of blood. When you donate to the blood bank your giving ~500ml and I've never heard of anyone recommending liver, other than not having an empty stomach there's no special dietary changes necessary. Am I missing something?
      - mtrower 7y ago
        I can't speak directly to your given values, and am unfortunately in a poor position to research them. However, different women have different experiences. Some suffer from anemia and/or iron deficiency during their cycle. Perhaps this information will be useful?
      - 7y ago
eb0la 7y ago
In the old world (tm) women used to have a diary/agenda/calendar and tracked it there. The trend is not "track everything": if you have an idea that makes women carry less stuff with them, I assure you there is a market. their bags. Data from those apps is really valuable from a marketing perspective. The case with least value is selling it to P&G or whoever just to track how much market share do they have. If you put a tracker on it (facebook, for example) you can build a custom audience on top of it and promote/sell whatever you want related to reproductive healt and/or sexuality. Not just women. You could be a little evil and sell women tampons before they have menstruation. You could be evil and build a custom Facebook audience with users from your app and make money selling them stuff using a retargeting bid (since they are part of your audience). Or you could be very evit and target partners of women whe ceased to use your app for more than, say, 3-4 months and show ads for DNA paternity tests (which you don't sell, but someone else does and gives a referral fee for it). Or you could have very, very evil and build an audience around partners of women who might be pregnant, capture the clicks to build another audience (this time yours) and sell porn, tinder, dating/e-whoring, and divorce advice for a fee. Will work because this is a retargeting list (you already marked them as your customers, so bidding will be low for the ads).
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Advertisers can sure be creepy can't they. Maybe FB audiences should be made public, or you're told if you're in one. It seems a lot more invasive than other Ads software I've looked into (from the perspective of what you could do).
- jakear 7y ago
  Might be missing something here, but why would women who might be pregnant be a particularly valuable audience for porn sites, tinder, etc?
  - mtrower 7y ago
    Not the women - their partners.
    - 7y ago
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
Because lots of weird shit happens to women. Pregnant or not? Maybe your hormones aren't right - one of the signs is usually change in monthly cycle. Whenever you have to go to the doctor for pap smears and so on, the doctor asks about it. For some folks, their weight determines their cycle length - too much or too little fat can change fertility. Perhaps you get really, really bad PMS (PMDD) and need to take anti-depressants around 2 weeks before the beginning of your cycle. And more, I'm guessing. I just can't think of another example right now, but in any case, monthly cycles are a big indicator of health issues and can be a great help with life issues as well.
RichardCA 7y ago
A lot of dudes keep track of their girlfriend's periods, because every month there is one "safe" weekend where you can have unprotected sex and get away with it. This is sometimes called the "Rhythm Method" or "Fertility Awareness" and a lot of men have self-interested reasons for wanting to know this about a woman. There is a history of apps optimized for this purpose. Some wholesome for married couples to use, and some for skeezy bachelors who want to track multiple women. https://gizmodo.com/iamaman-period-tracking-iphone-app-for-sleazy-shameles-5120556 https://gizmodo.com/iamaman-period-tracking-iphone-app-for-s... https://jezebel.com/another-innovative-menstrual-tracker-app-5513504 https://jezebel.com/another-innovative-menstrual-tracker-app...
- H8crilA 7y ago
  > and some for skeezy bachelors who want to track multiple women Isn't this crazy - the amount of work people would put in just to have occasional unprotected sex. People are animals.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's not crazy. Sex is one of the most fundamental and powerful desires we have. What's actually crazy, in a mostly positive way, is how much control we've managed to achieve over it at individual and social level.
  - marvin 7y ago
    > People are animals Well, yes, we're really just pretending otherwise. Also agree with TeMPOralL's sentiment :)
- bakuninsbart 7y ago
  Wowowow, isn't it like 10 days that are safe? I might be in very risky territory here.
  - tremon 7y ago
    Within the span of ten days, you can be sure there is at least one weekend.
novia 7y ago
Prediction. Menstruation apps are useful for prediction. Don't want to bleed all over the office furniture at work? It might be useful to have an idea of when you will start bleeding.
froindt 7y ago
Because of the monthly hormone cycle, women can have a difficult time getting taken seriously at the doctor. "Your hormone levels are shifting, that's probably why you're experiencing _symptom_". If you can show it happens throughout the month, and you have specific data relating whatever symptoms you're experiencing with your cycle, you're a lot more likely to actually get treated for the aliment.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Excuse me but what kind of an idiot doctor doesn't know what menstruation is or what it can potentially cause? And you really need to show him an app for that instead of just saying it happens every period? I'd rather change a doctor to someone who didn't sleep through their medical school...
  - BigJ1211 7y ago
    This unfortunately seems to be rather common (at least in the US), John Oliver did an episode on it a short while ago. It has a lot to do with the history of the medical field as opposed to modern Mal-intent. For example a lot of testing was done on men and then that data was taken and also used for women. If you search for "John Oliver medical bias" you'll find the video.
astura 7y ago
If a woman is trying to conceive it could be helpful to predict her fertility window using menstrual cycle tracking. Same with if she were trying NOT to conceive (so-called "natural family planning") Doctors ask you if you have a regular cycle, the only way to know that is to track your cycle. If you're having some sort of issue with your reproductive organs you may track your cycle for a few months to try to better pin down the issue.
wodenokoto 7y ago
Cycles aren't regular, so just adding an event every 27th day in your calendar, won't be of much use to a lot of women. These apps can get quite good at predicting irregular cycles. Some apps will give users warnings of the type "PMS starts tomorrow, expect moodswings", or "expect extreme tiredness" and for people who are heavily affected by their period, this can be a big help in controlling their feelings or just understand their well-being.
dirtyid 7y ago
As a dude, I use it to track my mood / fatigue for lifting which worked OK.

mirimir 7y ago

What ever happened to the idea of local storage? And yeah, I know, income. This is one reason I hate smartphones and apps.

MBCook 7y ago
That’s how Apple Health works, and it will gain this feature in a week or so.

HarryHirsch 7y ago

What happened to the idea of paper? There are no concerns about privacy, and data are easily exported via photocopy.

skyyler 7y ago
Paper gets wet. Some critters like to eat paper. Paper burns. Paper has weight. Paper has volume. If you leave your papers at home, you can't easily access them by logging in on someone else's papers. Photocopying seems analogous to copying files at first, but consider the costs of photocopying something. In addition to the expensive machine, you need paper and toner...
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > Paper burns. It shreds too. This is a feature.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    And bits can be zeroed just as much as paper can shred.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      Bits are a hell of a lot more fickle. I can't ever know for sure what will happen to my data that thousands of companies have harvested online about me, even if I ask every one of them to delete it all. I can't have machine learning algorithms run on my paper to target me ads, either.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  Paper needs no battery. Paper needs no network coverage (not Wi-Fi) Weights compared: iPhone 6 4.55 ounces Paper notebook (example) 3 ounces Summing up the risks of flood+fire+critters you have a fraction of the risk for "falling to ground and break screen"+theft+malfunctioning. You'll need a pen or pencil, though.
7y ago

autoexec 7y ago

People should really just assume every scrap of data they input into their phones is being sent to at least one company who will happily sell it to anyone who asks. Never use your phone for anything you wouldn't be happy with being publicly known and associated with you forever. That's not what our devices should be, but that's the reality we live in. These devices aren't for us, they are to enable other companies to use us.

saagarjha 7y ago
> People should really just assume every scrap of data they input into their phones is being sent to at least one company who will happily sell it to anyone who asks. There are a number of apps that don’t let this information leave your device at all, or end-to-end encrypt it. You just have to find them.
- ben509 7y ago
  And then hope they don't get new management.
  - jraph 7y ago
    Don't hope. Don't guess. Use apps from F-Droid. There is still a risk at the app level but it is much lower. On iOS, there is no such thing so you can't do that. At the phone level, there are still opaque binary blobs, so don't trust blindly.
- ryanmcbride 7y ago
  While true, assuming that they could access and sell your data if they wanted to is still a good rule to follow, as it'll make you more cautious.
- grecy 7y ago
  Just wait till someone with very deep pockets buys them. i.e WhatsApp
  - 7y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

From https://compliancy-group.com/hipaa-fines-directory-year/ https://compliancy-group.com/hipaa-fines-directory-year/ "The federal fines for noncompliance are based on the level of perceived negligence found within your organization at the time oft he HIPAA violation. These fines can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation (or per record), with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per year for each violation. View our HIPAA fines chart below for the full HIPAA fines list." And on the same page, according to the HIPAA Violation Penalty Tiers, the fourth and worse tier is "The covered entity acted with willful neglect and failed to make a timely correction". I bet if these companies got sued for $50,000 per person using them who had their data leaked to facebook, it would get everyone's attention really quickly.

pixelbath 7y ago
When writing medical software, HIPAA was an ever-present monster forcing me to consider all potential ways we'd be under a company-ending event. Once your fine totals exceed $100,000, you're required to issue a press release detailing how bad the damage is, in addition to the fines that stack for each violation (each patient's record would be considered one "violation"). I'm surprised any company keeping health information would be willing to sell that data without extensive legal protection, whether or not that data is protected explicitly under HIPAA. Seems to me like this should be treated like any other PHI breach.
- zik 7y ago
  What about those DNA companies that collect even more sensitive medical information - your DNA - and then straight up sell it to companies who'll use it against you (health insurance)? Why are these guys not facing billions in fines and being dissolved for egregious violations? Edit: It seems that none of these are HIPAA violations because these companies aren't classified as medical organisations.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    They wouldn't be subject to HIPAA, but they would be subject to GINA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimination_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrim...

swiley 7y ago

ALL the apps are sharing your data. If it didn't come from f-droid or you can't compile it yourself you absolutely can't trust it. (even then you still need to be very carefull, just look at what goes on in npm.) A good number of closed source apps are pathological attacks on both your OS and the public mind, using them is defintitely one of the less responsible things you can do.

fortran77 7y ago

Do they really need that photo? I find that to be in poor taste.

jedberg 7y ago
A melting popsicle?
- lucasmullens 7y ago
  It's alluding to menstrual bleeding. A delicious food looking like period blood I think can fairly be described as "poor taste".
  - novia 7y ago
    Can we get over the menstruation stigma already? The article is about menstruation tracking apps. You guys shouldn't be shocked by imagery alluding to menstruation in such a context.
    - chooseaname 7y ago
      I iMessaged the link to the article to my SO. She said the image was in poor taste and deleted the message. So, there's that.
    - egdod 7y ago
      I'm over the stigma. But it's still a private bodily function, and I still think it's in poor taste. It adds nothing to the article--it's just there for shock value/entertainment. Imagine if this were an article about... I dunno, an app that finds cheap toilet paper near your zip code. Would it be laudable if it included a picture of a smeary piece of melted chocolate?
      - novia 7y ago
        This isn't an app for locating menstrual supplies. It is an app for predicting when your metaphorical popsicle will melt.

michelinman 7y ago

Back in 1988 I wrote a holiday/sick calendar app with basic reporting. The first thing management in EVERY department did was predict the sick days. I found that out 5 years after I had left.

copperx 7y ago
How did they predict sick days? A statistical model?

matahwoosh 7y ago

Very recently there was a flurry of articles about Apple copying popular apps, among them woman health apps [1]. Although they were not wrong to voice their concerns about Apple, it's hard to cheer for the app makers when you later find out they don't exactly value your privacy and are not upfront with you, as a user, about that. [1] washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses-its-app-store-copy-best-ideas EDIT: language

m463 7y ago
A more straightforward way of doing this is not to copy the app and make it more private... It would be to allow you to see what the apps are doing, and prevent them from doing what you don't approve of. Including apple apps. It could be as simple as: prevent this app from using the network.
- camhenlin 7y ago
  The problem I see with that is that many (most?) users are not going to go deny network access to each app. Furthermore, what if the app tells me that it needs network access to get calendar info or something along those lines - and then actually uses the network for that -, then subsequently uses the network access to siphon off my personal info? Certainly if you had the ability to "see" what an app is doing, you might be able to catch that, but that's well beyond the grasp of most users. Better to be able to inherently trust the app because it was built by a trusted 3rd party. Certainly I agree that it would be nice to be able to disable network access to any app I felt like though.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Only for 3rd party keyboards, network access is denied by default. First you have to go through settings to enable them instead of a simple dialog box (which I agree with) and then you have to go back in settings to give the keyboard network access and you get a very clear warning. But, most people on HN don’t seem to understand Apple’s priorities. This is how it should be. 1. Apple 2. Users . . . . 3. Developers.

bound008 7y ago

For those bringing up HIPAA I hate to let you know that none of these apps are covered by HIPAA, and none of them can be fined under HIPAA. If your friend tells you they have a disease, and you tell someone else, are you breaking HIPAA? No. In order to break HIPAA you have to first be a covered entity. An example of a covered entity is a Doctor (or provider). If you tell Google or Facebook that you have some kind of condition, that information is not covered by HIPAA because they are not a medical provider, and therefore have no legal obligation to keep that information private.

freedomben 7y ago
Thank you. I have an app idea that I wondered if would be regulated by HIPAA. It's not going to share data, but it's always good to know what regulations apply. source for what OP is talking about: https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp https://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/pr_06.asp
- bound008 7y ago
  This is a great resource. Especially the key points > The Privacy Rule applies only to covered entities. Many organizations that use, collect, access, and disclose individually identifiable health information will not be covered entities, and thus, will not have to comply with the Privacy Rule.
baddox 7y ago
That's interesting. When I was in college I worked tech support for the residence halls, and we went through what I remember to be a short HIPAA compliance program in case we encountered any medical information while servicing another student's computer. Perhaps that was just a (reasonable) precautionary policy of the university rather than a strict legal requirement under HIPAA. Or perhaps I'm simply misremembering, and it was some other compliance program other than HIPAA.
- godelski 7y ago
  If you're servicing a computer that person isn't exactly sharing that information with you. Well, probably not intentionally.

api 7y ago

I assume that virtually all mobile apps are sharing your data. That's the entire business model of mobile: offer a "free" service as a pretext to get an app onto the phone and then spy on the user as much as possible. It's part of why I avoid apps whenever possible. I only install an app if it's a service I really need and there is no other way to use it, e.g. via the web. Web sites can still track but they can't suck location data, sensor data, etc.

MBCook 7y ago

iOS 13 will be out in a week or so with this feature built in. Hopefully that will put an end to at least some of this shady market.

chooseaname 7y ago

Lead image is in pretty poor taste; so I was just told by a female. Aside from that, what developer thinks, "Hmmm, I need to add analytics, let me see what FaceBook has to offer?" Seriously?

orasis 7y ago
If you’re doing ads on Facebook you have to use the SDK to optimize for in app actions.
yesbabyyes 7y ago
An aside, but I see this a lot on HN: > so I was just told by a female. What does "female" connote (not a native speaker)? To me, and translated into my language, it sounds like you're talking about a pet, a dog or some other animal. "Oh, it's a female". Translating it to eg Swedish or French, it sounds really weird, whereas the respective word for "woman" would sound normal. Is it different in English, or is this more a quirk of this forum/certain subcultures?
- timthorn 7y ago
  No, it sounds weird in UK English too, unless as an adjective applied to a larger ungenered group. Eg "My female colleagues" sounds fine, as does "a woman I work with"
  - yesbabyyes 7y ago
    Thanks, that's pretty much how I would express myself in English. In Swedish, the words for "manly" and "womanly" ("manlig"/"kvinnlig") can be used for that ("my manly colleagues" would typically be understood as the men among my colleagues, rather than the most bearded/musky/etc among them). Now let's hear from a US English native!
    - mtrower 7y ago
      U.S. English native. This ("a female") sounds just fine to me. My friends or I might talk this way amongst ourselves(and no, I'm not talking about an all-male, socially mal-adjusted circle of friends). It's not what you'd call 100% standard mainstream English, but it's no so far outside the norm that I'd think twice about it either. While it's probably not how I'd teach a non-native to speak, I definitely wouldn't read anything into its use here, either. Chalk it up to subculture, I suppose, as suggested earlier.

OrgNet 7y ago

who's horny

dang 7y ago
Please don't do this here.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  can't you tell who's the horniest using their period cycles?

microcolonel 7y ago

What are the essential features in these applications, are they not working on standardized methods? There's one on F-Droid which probably isn't selling your period, so if they're mostly similar, maybe that's an option.

malicioususer11 7y ago

my vagina my choice. :)

triggercut 7y ago

"You are being shown this ad because: - assumptions made probably by men"

manpandalion 7y ago

Do they synchronize the data? xD

ragerino 7y ago

I got myself a connected electric toothbrush and body balance. After I found out that tracking the weight and my tooth brushing habits only works if I share the data with a central server, I now basically have a regular electric toothbrush and body balance.

jobigoud 7y ago
Not only you have to sync it through their server but you probably also need to go through their specific app or website to read the data back. And sometimes they don't even have a way to download the historical records if you want to archive them or process them yourself. I find tracking weight still invaluable so I get along with it but was also disappointed to learn I needed to send everything their way. I wonder if it would possible/legal to intercept the requests from the device and route them to a local server implementing the same API endpoints.

LeoNatan25 7y ago

There was an article about how Apple was killing third party menstruation apps with iOS 13 because it is now built into the health app. This is why you want the OS to do it, rather than “start” “up” crapwares that sell data.

WA 7y ago
I agree. Especially all the menstrual health apps seem to be insane data grabbers. This should be something that belongs to a trusted company. However, the cycle tracking capabilities of iOS 13 are fine as a replacement for simple menstrual cycle trackers, but it's too simple to replace more sophisticated cycle trackers that also allow to track more body signals such as the temperature.
lancepioch 7y ago
I may be wrong, but I think that it's completely encrypted and that Apple couldn't even access it without your password. I can't say I'm a huge fan of being locked into the ecosystem, however I am relieved to hear that my privacy is actually cared for.

aguzzi94 7y ago

Bad news for the soy boys!