Privacy & Security

Abstract from the article titled, "Before Using Birth Control Apps Consider Your Privacy" posted on Wired.com: "Natural Cycles’ privacy policy states that in using the app each user grants the company and any of its partners broad rights to “use, reproduce, distribute, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, communicate to the public, and otherwise utilize and exploit a user's anonymized information.”

The internet has made DNA testing a big global business. In the United States and Europe, millions of people have sent samples of their saliva to commercial labs in the hopes of learning something new about their personal health or lineage. Ancestry.com, 23andMe, MyHeritage, and FamilyTreeDNA are all industry leaders that sell their services online, share test results on websites, and even provide guides on how to find relatives in phone directories or share results on social media. They frequently claim ownership of your genetic information and sell access to their databases to large pharmaceutical and medical technology firms.

An article posted in the Journal of the American Medical Association identified that some of the highest-ranking health apps used to assist people with mental health conditions (e.g. depression) and smoking cessation were sharing data with Facebook and Google services and that only a third disclosed such practices.