A new Senate bill seeks to expand privacy protections for medical data.
After Roe’s reversal, activists and data privacy experts began warning app users during the period to remove the app. By logging your period, the app can learn your cycle, predict your fertile window, and prompt you when you need a pregnancy test. Privacy experts have expressed concern about the potential for data collected by these apps to be used to identify people seeking abortions in states where abortion is prohibited and criminalized. A new bill titled “Keeping Health and Online Location Data Safeguarded (UPHOLD) Privacy Act” aims to prevent that.
Period Apps in a Post-Roe World: What You Need to Know
If passed, the bill would give consumers ownership over their health data and limit the ability of businesses to collect or use personal health information without a consumer’s consent. Additionally, we prohibit the use of personally-identifying data for advertising, whether collected from consumers, fitness trackers, medical centers, or browsing history.
The bill was introduced by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Mazzy Hirono. “Since Roe’s reversal, data brokers and technology companies have benefited from the personal health and location data of millions of Americans, including those seeking reproductive health care services,” Warren said in her statement. I have been getting(opens in new tab) “UPHOLD Privacy Act protects sensitive data and privacy rights of consumers.”
After Roe’s reversal, a number of period tracking apps made updates and issued statements ensuring their users’ data was safe — Flo launched an “anonymous mode” that removed identifiable user information. bottom. End-to-end encryption for all users — but it remains to be seen what happens when law enforcement demands that period tracking app data be handed over.
“As Republicans work to ban and criminalize reproductive health care nationwide, it is critical that we protect the privacy of reproductive data for everyone in our country,” Hirono said in a statement. “Everyone should be able to trust that personal data about their body and health care will be protected.”
The bill has just been introduced, but in the meantime, here’s how you can donate to the National Abortion Fund and Reproductive Justice Network.
