Abstract
In everyday life, menstruating persons around the world use different applications to help them monitor menstruation or fertile days to plan or to avoid conception, as well as to monitor their health condition. Much to users’ dismay, in recent years disturbing information appeared in the media about the alleged disclosure of information collected by menstrual monitoring applications to third parties for commercial purposes. The mechanism of such a procedure seems to be relatively simple—if the user of the application does not enter information about the onset of menstruation on the date set by the application as a start date, after a few days a user may notice an increased number of advertisements for products related to pregnancy and motherhood on the devices it uses. This paper examines whether data collected by period tracking applications may be considered as data concerning health which is covered under privacy laws (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation is the current gold standard for privacy legislation), and if this data should be treated under law. Additionally, the authors contend that collecting information on menstruation cycles and sharing such data (either with private entities or public bodies) infringes upon the right to privacy, intimacy, and reproductive autonomy of users of period tracking applications.
Recommended Citation
Kuźnicka-Blaszkowska, Dominika and Joachimska, Joanna
(2025)
"When Your Phone Knows You’re Pregnant Even If You Don’t: Period Tracking Applications and Threats to Privacy,"
Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 27:
Iss.
1, Article 9.
Available at:
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol27/iss1/9