Privacy Analysis of Period Tracking Mobile Apps in the Post-Roe v. Wade Era

Abstract

To help people manage their health, period tracking apps have become very popular in recent years. However, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Abortion will be banned in more and more states. Since the health data stored in the period tracking apps can be used to infer whether the user has had or is considering an abortion, mobile users are worrying that these apps may disclose their sensitive information, which can be used to prosecute users. Although period tracking apps have received attention from the research community, no existing work has performed a systematic privacy analysis of these apps, especially in the Post-Roe v. Wade era. To fill the void, this paper presents a comprehensive privacy analysis of popular period tracking apps. We first collect 35 popular period tracking apps from Google Play. Then, we analyze the sensitive user data collected by the period tracking apps using traffic analysis and static analysis. Further we inspect their privacy policies and check the consistency of the privacy policy with the app’s behavior. In addition, we analyze the app reviews to understand the users’ concerns about the period tracking apps. Our study reveals that some period tracking apps have indeed collected sensitive information and have the potential to share the data with third-party authorities. It is urgent for these apps to take action to protect user privacy, and mobile users should pay special attention to this kind of apps they used.