Is It Time To Delete Your Period Tracker App?

But Trump’s latest pronouncement on abortion monitoring calls into question one of our most fundamental rights—privacy.

Ever since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there has been a growing concern among those who rely on a period tracker app to monitor their periods (a third of American women according to a 2019 survey), about the safety of their private health information. As well as a growing movement across social media urging women to delete period apps, in order to prevent private medical information used against them if they ever needed or wanted an abortion.

Anastasia Sanger, Glamour’s Senior Manager of Social Creative Development, was one of many who decided to rethink their reliance on period tracker apps. “I started tracking when I switched from pills to an IUD in March 2022, right before the initial leak of Roe v Wade being overturned,” Sanger says. “At first I used the iPhone health app for it. But when the abortion ruling officially went through I saw a social media post about how it could lead to your period tracker info could be used as evidence. Even though I live in a state where it’s pretty easy to get an abortion, I still found that thought uncomfortable.”

Sanger continues: “Shortly after that Planned Parenthood launched Spot On, their own period tracker. Having my info with someone who is literally an abortion provider and was leading the charge against abortion restrictions made me feel more comfortable.”

Spot On is one of the period tracker apps that explicitly states that it “does not store your information or personal data.” Euki is another that promises zero data collection. But regardless of privacy promises and even though Sanger feels safe using a privacy-focused app, there’s still a note of doubt about what could happen in a court of law. “I still don’t know for sure that they wouldn’t also have to turn over data.”

Now, with the former president announcing that he expects more aggressive and intrusive monitoring of pregnancies to become the norm, how we choose to monitor our own health—or even how we use the internet to search for information and answers to our health questions—is something we should all increasingly be thinking about.

It’s an issue that Charley, an online abortion chatbot that provides abortion options in every state, is currently grappling with. Nicole Cushman, Charley’s Managing Director and Associate in the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, says. “So much of what is built online is really designed to track people, and to collect as much data as possible.

“At Charley, we don’t collect any personally identifiable information. We only ask users’ locations—a zip code or city and state—and the date of their last menstrual period to help us provide accurate information on what options might be available closest to them. But beyond that, we are not using any tracking tools. We don’t share information with any third parties, and then all of the data, all of the conversations that Charlie has, are deleted from our system regularly. So even though we don’t know who the users are, we’re also making sure we’re not keeping a record of those conversations.”

She acknowledges, though, that “there’s a lot of justifiable fear of surveillance and criminalization in the online space.” And “there are a lot of digital entities out there that haven’t taken the kinds of measures that we have at Charley, and may be placing people at risk, whether they intend to or not.”