Period Data ‘Gold Mine' Poses Serious Health and Safety Risks, Report Finds
A new report highlights the dangers of menstrual tracking apps, which collect data that could jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of people who menstruate.
Apps that help people track their menstrual cycle are data 'gold mines' for advertisers, a new report warns. Advertisers use this highly valuable data for customer profiling, allowing them to tailor marketing campaigns to specific groups of consumers.
The report, published by the University of Cambridge's Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy on Tuesday, June 10, explains that the risks to app users go far beyond just targeted ads. When this data falls into the wrong hands, it can affect users' job prospects and lead to workplace surveillance, health insurance discrimination, and cyberstalking. It has even been used to limit access to abortion in the U.S., the study warns.
Hundreds of millions of people use period tracking apps. A 2024 study estimated that the number of global downloads for the three most popular apps exceeds 250 million. These platforms are run by companies that profit from the mountain of user data they collect—particularly pregnancy data. According to the University of Cambridge report, data on pregnancy is 200 times more valuable to advertisers than data on age, gender, or location.
Investigations conducted in 2019 and 2020 by Privacy International, a U.K.-based nonprofit, found that multiple apps directly shared personal data with advertisers. A follow-up study published on May 28 found that while major menstrual app companies have improved their approach to data privacy, they still collect device data from users in the U.K. and U.S. with 'no meaningful consent.'
Stefanie Felsberger, sociologist and lead author of the University of Cambridge report, interviewed period tracking app users in Austria to understand why they use them and what they track. She was surprised to find that many people she spoke with didn't think of their menstrual data as personal or intimate and were unaware of its incredible commercial value.
'Period tracking apps collect a vast number of different kinds of information,' Felsberger told Gizmodo. 'They don't just collect information about the menstrual cycle as such, they also collect information about people's reproductive choices, sexual activities, their wellbeing, health, [and] medication intake,' she said. These apps also gather background information about users, including their age, gender, IP addresses, app behavior, and device information, she added.
'We have limited and also changing knowledge about how and where this data has been shared and who has access to it,' Felsberger said.
In the U.S., menstrual tracking apps are regulated as general wellness devices, so the data they collect don't get any special legal protections, she explained. Advertisers aren't the only ones who can exploit this lack of safeguarding to access menstrual data. Government officials can also get their hands on this information and use it to restrict abortion access.
'Menstrual tracking data is being used to control people's reproductive lives.'
Felsberger's report highlights two such cases, though in these instances, menstrual data did not come specifically from period tracking apps. Still, they illustrate how governments can use this information to limit access to abortion at both state and federal levels.
In 2019, Missouri's state health department used menstrual tracking data to investigate failed abortions. They also tracked patients' medical ID numbers, the gestational age of fetuses, and the dates of medical procedures. As a result of this investigation, the state attempted to withhold the license of St. Louis' Planned Parenthood clinic—the only abortion provider in the state at that time. This led to a year-long legal battle that ultimately restored the clinic's license.
During President Donald Trump's first administration, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement tracked the menstrual cycles of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the U.S. They aimed to prevent these minors from obtaining abortions even in cases of rape. A freedom of information request by MSNBC uncovered a spreadsheet containing dates of the minors' menstrual cycles, lengths of their pregnancies, whether the sex had been consensual, and whether they had requested an abortion.
These cases underscore the dangers of failing to protect users' period tracking data, especially in a post-Dobbs world. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, abortion access has become deeply fragmented across the U.S. This procedure is currently banned in 13 states and access is significantly limited in an additional 11 states.
In the European Union and the U.K., period tracking apps have more legal protections. 'But they are not often implemented very well,' Felsberger said. Their privacy policies tend to be 'very vague,' which makes it difficult for users to understand who can access their data.
'App developers and companies have a very large responsibility, because they do present themselves as providing people with this opportunity to learn about their menstrual cycles,' she said. 'I think they should also do their utmost to keep people's data safe and be transparent about the way that they use data.' There is also a need for stronger federal regulations, especially in the U.S., she added.
Given that these apps offer valuable health insights, it's unrealistic to expect users to stop using them entirely. But Felsberger recommends switching to non-commercial period tracking apps that provide more data privacy. These platforms are run by non-profit organizations or research institutions that won't share your information with third parties.
As the landscape of reproductive health becomes increasingly treacherous in the U.S., understanding how third parties may exploit your menstrual data has never been more important.
'Menstrual tracking data is being used to control people's reproductive lives,' Felsberger said in a University statement. 'It should not be left in the hands of private companies.'
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Paul Pope has written and drawn some of the most gorgeous comics of the twenty-first century — from 'Batman: Year 100,' in which Batman challenges a dystopian surveillance state, to 'Battling Boy,' with its adolescent god proving his mettle by fighting giant monsters. But it's been more than a decade since Pope's last major comics work, and in a Zoom interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the intervening years have had their frustrations. At one point, he held up a large stack of drawings and said the public hasn't seen any of it yet. 'Making graphic novels is not like making comics,' Pope said. 'You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating.' But there's good news on the horizon. A career-spanning exhibition of Pope's work just opened at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, while an expanded edition of his art book, now called 'PulpHope2: The Art of Paul Pope,' is due in the fall — as is the first volume of a collection of Pope's self-published science fiction epic 'THB.' It's all part of what Pope described as 'a number of chess moves' designed to 'reintroduce' and — he grudgingly admitted — 'rebrand' himself. Pope is reemerging at a fraught time for the comics industry and creativity in general, with publishers and writers suing AI companies while generative AI tools go viral by copying popular artists. He even said that it's 'completely conceivable' that popular comic book artists could be replaced by AI. The contrast is particularly stark in Pope's case, since he's known for largely eschewing digital tools in favor of brushes and ink. But he said he isn't ruling out taking advantage of AI ('any tool that works is good'), which he already uses for research. 'I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones,' he said. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. You have a gallery show coming up, and it coincides with the second volume of your art book, 'PulpHope.' How did those come about? I got contacted by Boom Studios, I think it was late 2023, and they were interested in possibly collaborating on something [through their boutique imprint Archaia]. So we went back and forth for a bit, I came on as art director, and I was able to hire my own designer, this guy Steve Alexander, also known as Rinzen, and we spent about nine months [in] 2024 putting the book together. And then, coincidentally, I know Philippe Labaune, just from having been to the gallery, we have mutual friends and things, and he made the offer to show work from not only the book, [but] kind of a career retrospective. It's ballooned into something really nice. Are you somebody who thinks about the arc of their career and how it fits together, or are you mostly future-oriented? I'd say a combination of both, because — I have said this elsewhere, but I think at a certain point, an artist needs to become their own curator. Jack Kirby famously said, 'All that matters is the 10% of your best work. The rest of it gets you to the 10%.' But then in my case, I do a lot of variant covers. I've worked on many things outside of comics that are kind of hard to acquire, whether it's screen prints or fashion industry stuff. And I thought it'd be really cool if we do something that's a chronological look at the life of an artist — [something that] focuses mainly on comics, [with] a lot of stuff that people have either never seen or it's hard to find. It's the first of a number of chess moves that I've been setting up for a long time. And the gallery is — I would call it a second chess move. I have another announcement later in the summer for a new project. Making graphic novels is not like making comics. You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating. This stack here, this is my current work, and it's all stuff that basically hasn't been published yet. So I thought this was a great way to either reintroduce my work or — I hate the term 'rebrand,' but rebrand myself. In your essay 'Weapons of Choice,' you talk about all these different tools you use, the brushes and pens, the Sumi ink. Has your working style been pretty consistent, pretty analog, for your entire career? I would say mostly. I did start incorporating Photoshop for coloring and textures, kind of late to the game — I'd say it was not 'till around 2003 or so. I developed carpal tunnel around 2010, so I've tried to steer away from digital as much as I can, but I still use it. I mean, I use Photoshop every day. It's just [that] most of what I do is the comics purism of ink on a paper. Do you think of ink on paper as objectively better, or it just happens to be how you work? I don't think it's better, to be honest. I think any tool that works is good. You know, Moebius used to say that sometimes he would draw with coffee grinds, he drew with a fork. And I have some friends, in fact, a number of friends, who are doing highly popular mainstream books, who have gravitated toward digital work, or its various advantages. And I just don't like that. But one thing [is,] I sell original art, and if you have a digital document, you might be able to make a print of it, but there is no drawing. It's binary code. Also, I feel an allegiance to the guys like Alex Toth and Steve Ditko, who took time to teach me things. Moebius, I was friends with him. Frank Miller. We all work in traditional analog art. I feel like I want to be a torchbearer for that. How do you feel about the fact that comics-making is increasingly digital? I think it's inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. So now it's a matter of being given a new, vivid array of tools that artists can choose from. When you talk to younger artists, do you feel like there's still a lane for them to do analog work? Absolutely. One of the challenges now is, you can download an app, or you can get an iPad Pro and start drawing. I think the learning curve in some ways is a little quicker, and you can fix, edit, and change things that you don't like. But it also means the drawing never ends. One thing I really like about analog art is, it's punishing. [One] piece of advice I got early on was, your first 1,000 ink drawings with a brush are going to be terrible, and you just have to get through those first 1,000. And it was true, it was humiliating — every time I sat down and tried to draw with the brushes, a lot of the work is going to be in your your fingers or your wrists, and it's easy to make mistakes, but gradually you get an authority over the tool, and then you can draw what it is you really see in your mind. Before we started recording, we were also talking about AI, and it sounds like it's something you've been aware of and thinking about. Yeah, sure, I use it all the time. I don't use it for anything creative outside of research. For example, I just wrote an essay on one of my favorite cartoonists, Attilio Micheluzzi. His library is being published by Fantagraphics right now, and I did the intro for the second book. It's amazing, because there's a lot of personal detail about the man that was really, really hard to find, unless you could literally go to — he died in Naples, but he spent a lot of his time in North Africa and Rome. This guy's a man of mystery. But you now can get the dates of his birth and his death, what caused his death, what did he do? And AI helps with that. Or sometimes, I work on story structure. But I don't use it directly to create anything. I use it more like, let's say it's a consultant. My nephew writes [code] and he describes AI as a sociopath personal assistant that doesn't mind lying to you. I've asked AI at times like, 'What books has Paul Pope published?' It's kind of strange, because maybe 80% of it will be correct, and 20% will be completely hallucinated books I've never done. So I tend to take my nephew's point of view on it. You have this skepticism, but you don't want to rule out using it where it's useful. No, absolutely not. It's a tool. It's a very contentious point with cartoonists, and there are important questions about authorship, copyright protection. In fact, I just had dinner with Frank Miller last night, we were talking about this. If [I ask AI to] give me 'Lady Godiva, naked on the horse, as drawn by Frank Miller,' I can spit that out in 30 seconds. Some people might say, 'Oh, this is my art.' But AI doesn't generate the art from the same kind of place that humans would, where it's based on identity and personal history and emotional inflection. It can recombine everything that's been known and programmed into the database. And you could do with my stuff, too. It never looks like my drawings, but it's getting better and better. But I think really, speaking as a futurist, the real question is killer robots and surveillance and a lot of technology being developed very, very quickly, without a lot of public consideration about the implications. Here in New York, at the moment, there's a really great gallery on 23rd Street called Poster House. It's pretty much the history of 20th-century poster design, which is right up my alley. So I went there with my girlfriend last week, and they currently have an exhibit on the atom bomb and how it was portrayed in different contexts through poster art. There was this movement 'Atoms for Peace,' where people were pro-atomic energy [but] were against war, and I kind of liked that, because that's how I feel about AI. I would say, 'AI for peace.' I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones. I think that's a much more serious question, because at some point, we're going to pass a tipping point, because there's a lot of bad actors in the world that are developing AI, and I don't know if some of the developers themselves are concerned about the implications. They just want to be the first person to do it — and of course, they're going to make a lot of money. You mentioned this idea of somebody typing, 'Give me a drawing in the style of Paul Pope.' And I think the argument that some people would make is that you shouldn't be able to do that — or at least Paul should be getting paid, since your art was presumably used to train the model, and that's your name being used. It's a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today — I think the best thing is to go to the source — 'compare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the '90s.' And AI said that there's definitely some similarities, because you're using work that's already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It's not like [when] somebody stole Guns N' Roses' record, 'Chinese Democracy,' and put it online. That's different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] 'I want to write a song in the style of Guns N' Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.' Obviously, if somebody publishes a comic book and it looks just like one of mine, that might be a problem. There's class action lawsuits on the behalf of some of the artists, so I think this is a legal issue that is going to be hammered out, probably. But it gets more complicated, because it's very hard to regulate AI development or distribution in places like Afghanistan or Iran or China. They're not going to follow American legal code. And then on the killer robot side, you've written a lot and drawn a lot of dystopian fiction yourself, like in 'Batman: Year 100.' How close do you feel we are to that future right now? I think we're probably, honestly, about two years away. I mean, robots are already being used on the battlefield. Drones are used in lethal warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised, within two or three years, if we start seeing robot automation on a regular basis. In fact, where my girlfriend lives in Brooklyn, there's a fully robot-serviced coffee shop, no one works there. And the scary thing is, I think people become normalized to this, so the technology is implemented before there's the social contract, where people are able to ask whether or not this is a good [thing]. My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won't even have to pay any artists. And I think that's completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced. How do you feel about that? Are you worried about your own career? I don't worry about my career because I believe in human innovation. Call me an optimist. And the one distinct advantage we have over machine intelligence is — until we actually take the bridle off and machines are fully autonomous and have a conscience and a memory and emotional reflections, which are the things that are required in order to become an artist, or, for that matter, a human — they can't replace what humans do. They can replicate what humans do. If you're trying to get into the business of, let's say comics, and you're trying to draw like Jim Lee, there's a chance you might get replaced, because AI has already imprinted every single Jim Lee image in its memory. So that would be easy to replace, but what is harder to replace is the human invention of something like whatever Miles Davis introduced into jazz, or Picasso introduced, along with Juan Gris, when they invented Cubism. I don't see machines being able to do that. You were talking about the discipline needed to draw with a brush, and one of the things I worry about is, if we increasingly devalue the time and the money and everything it takes for somebody to get good at that, you can't decouple the inventiveness of the Paul Pope who comes up with these cool stories with the Paul Pope who spent all his time making drawing after drawing with brushes and ink. If we think we can just focus on coming up with cool ideas, it's not going to work like that. I do think about this. I think it would be very challenging to be 18, 19, having grown up with a screen in front of you, you can upload an app to do anything, within seconds, and that's just not the way most of human history has worked. I mean, I don't think we're at that term 'singularity' yet, but we're getting really close to it. And that's the one thing that worries me is whether we talk about killer machines or machine consciousness overtaking human ingenuity, it would almost be a forfeit on the part of the people to stop having a sense of ethics, a sense of curiosity, determination — all these old school, bootstrap concepts that some people think are old-fashioned now, but I think that's how we preserve our humanity and our sense of soul. The first big collection of your 'THB' comics is coming this fall, and it sounds like that's also a big part of the Paul Pope rebrand or relaunch, the next chess move. Is it safe to assume that one of the other next chess moves is 'Battling Boy 2'? Yes. It's funny, because for a long time, we had it scheduled — 'Battling Boy 2' has to come out before 'THB' comes out. But there was some restructuring with [my publisher's] parent company, Macmillan, and my new art director came on in 2023 and he said, 'You know what, let's just move this around. We're going to start putting 'THB' out. It's already there.' And I was so relieved because, again, 'Battling Boy' is 500-plus pages, and I'd work on it, then I'd stop working to do commercial work. I work on it. I stop. I work on the movie. It's like I'm driving this high performance car, but it doesn't have enough gas in it, so I have to keep stopping and putting gasoline [in it]. So it's been reinvigorating [to have a new book coming out], because it kick-started everything.
