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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Gregory Health editor

Public health bodies urged to launch period tracking apps to protect data

A woman using her mobile phone
The financial worth of the data is ‘vastly underestimated’ by users who supply profit-driven companies with highly intimate details, the report says. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Public health bodies should launch alternatives to commercial period tracker apps, experts have said, as a report warns women’s personal data is at risk of being harvested by private companies.

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a “goldmine” for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication to sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use, according to the research by the University of Cambridge.

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