Social media, apps, smartphones. These are all part of almost everyone's daily routine to some extent. We use these avenues to communicate with the entire world, and the world speaks back to us. We keep in touch with family and friends, we search for-and purchase-the things we love, want, or need, and we tend to think very little of it. We are an open book society driven on instant gratification. We, as a culture, share our lives for everyone to see.
With that being said, there are some aspects of our lives that most of us would prefer to remain private. Very intimate details such as medical information, whether we are trying to get pregnant-or not-and menstruation cycles, are things that most would only share with a best friend or sibling.
But what happens when we become overly comfortable with the social-app lifestyle and it then becomes so integrated in our daily lives that we begin using apps to track details as personal as our menstruation? And worse than that, what happens when these apps share your most intimate details all along the information highway?
A recent study conducted by Privacy International has discovered just that. The seemingly, secretive sharing of information acquired by apps geared towards women for the sake of advertisement. And who is on the receiving end of this stolen information? None other than Facebook. The world's own overbearing, always present, big brother.
The UK-based charity has a fairly good track record of exposing shady apps. In late 2018, Privacy International exposed 36 of the world's most popular apps for sharing data to platforms such as Facebook, unbeknownst to the user.
"Out of the 36 apps we tested, we found that 61% automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app." the company says. "This happens whether the user has a Facebook account or not, and whether they are logged into Facebook or not."
In a more recent study, the British privacy watchdog tested a select few apps that are designed to track a woman's menstrual cycle. They found that at least two popular menstruation-tracking apps were actively sharing users' intimate sexual health information with Facebook and other platforms: Maya and MIA Fem.
This shared information was likely to include extremely intimate details such as recent sexual activity, types of contraception used (if any), and even ovulation schedules. Information that would of course be manually entered by the users.
The sharing is said to happen via the Facebook Software Development Kit.
After Privacy International called out the developers of these particular apps, the company says they are "pleased to announce" that Maya by Plackal Tech, had this to say in an email.
"We understand your concern that in addition to providing the analytics SDK, Facebook is also a social network and an ad network. We have hence removed both the Facebook core SDK and Analytics SDK from Maya. Version 3.6.7.7 with these changes is live on the Google Play Store and will be submitted for review to the Apple App Store by this weekend. We continue to use the Facebook Ad SDK, post opt-in to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. Maya does not share any personally identifiable data or medical data with the Facebook Ad SDK. The Ad SDK helps us earn revenue by displaying ads that our users can opt out of by subscribing to Maya's premium subscription."
MIA Fem refused to have their response published. Ironic that that would prefer to not have that information shared.
More information regarding the topic of this article can be found at https://www.privacyinternational.org/
