I use Macrofactor (macro tracking app for lifters with good privacy/UI) as a weight/period tracker, and occasional macro tracker. I don't think anybody is going to go to the effort to hack their databases to find the 100 women tracking our periods on it.
The one downside is that they do days since last period as days since the end of your last period, not days since the start, unlike literally every woman and gynecologist ever.
MacroFactor is very rare in the modern software world, probably because it was created by fitness science junkies rather than VCs or engineers. Greg was extremely adamant from the start that they're charging money, take it or leave it, but selling the product itself is all they're ever going to sell. No monetizing user data. No dark patterns to drive engagement and keep you in the app. All they're trying to drive is better lifting and better eating because that's honest to god Greg and Lindsay Nuckols passions in life, not getting rich. Classic lifestyle business that'll never eat the world, but it'll pay the rent in North Carolina for two 40 year-olds with no kids.
Only one (of the six reviewed) that I'd call acceptable -
> Euki is the only app Mozilla recommends without reservations. "Euki is special," Wodinsky* says.
> Unlike the other apps on this list, Mozilla says Euki keeps all your health information stored on your device, without even sending it to the company's servers.
> You don't even need to make an account, so you can stay completely anonymous. Euki also offers a "decoy" feature that shows fake, harmless information if someone gets your phone and tries to snoop.
*Shoshana Wodinsky, a privacy research analyst who tested 6 period tracker on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation
It indeed looks like the rest are "you're the product" (tm) type apps. Honestly, I don't expect much from Play Store (or App Store for that matter) these days but as a developer it's terrible what hoops you have to go through to publish your app.. Endless forms to fill out manually and then the overall store quality is just disappointing. Ads, ads, more ads and privacy and security debacles. Now it also looks like locking down on outside app stores like F-Droid.. Developers and hackers will find solutions but for the general population I'm not very hopeful. As to the period apps:
> This is also not Planned Parenthood's first run in with privacy criticisms. I wrote about similar problems four years ago, for example. The organisation didn't respond to a request for comment.
.. And it doesn't look like they care to change anything about it.
Who can end this on a positive note? I hate to be this negative but I don't see it.
Although the article doesn't accuse us of doing anything improper, we weren't contacted for comment, so I'd like to clarify our role.
We are customer data infrastructure, not a data broker. We do not buy, sell or monetize the customer data that passes through our systems.
Our role is analogous to infrastructure: customers choose what data to send, and RudderStack routes that data to the destinations they configure (analytics tools, data warehouses, marketing platforms, etc.). The customer owns the data and decides where it goes; RudderStack does not repurpose it for its own business.
Infrastructure providers like us should be held to high standards for security and privacy, but we should not be confused with companies that collect or monetize end-user data.
Somebody on HN recommended drip awhile ago:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.drip/
It's not mentioned in the article.
Like Euki it's local-only. I don't know how they compare as far as features but it's cool that there are two good apps out there.
List of recommended ones: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/health-and-wellness/#menstr...
>Drip, Euki, and Apple Health
I use Macrofactor (macro tracking app for lifters with good privacy/UI) as a weight/period tracker, and occasional macro tracker. I don't think anybody is going to go to the effort to hack their databases to find the 100 women tracking our periods on it.
The one downside is that they do days since last period as days since the end of your last period, not days since the start, unlike literally every woman and gynecologist ever.
MacroFactor is very rare in the modern software world, probably because it was created by fitness science junkies rather than VCs or engineers. Greg was extremely adamant from the start that they're charging money, take it or leave it, but selling the product itself is all they're ever going to sell. No monetizing user data. No dark patterns to drive engagement and keep you in the app. All they're trying to drive is better lifting and better eating because that's honest to god Greg and Lindsay Nuckols passions in life, not getting rich. Classic lifestyle business that'll never eat the world, but it'll pay the rent in North Carolina for two 40 year-olds with no kids.
Apple Health was not among the reviewed?
It's e2ee and only part of your icloud backup if you enable it. And you can separately manage read/write access from other apps.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/sec88be9900f/...
Only one (of the six reviewed) that I'd call acceptable -
> Euki is the only app Mozilla recommends without reservations. "Euki is special," Wodinsky* says.
> Unlike the other apps on this list, Mozilla says Euki keeps all your health information stored on your device, without even sending it to the company's servers.
> You don't even need to make an account, so you can stay completely anonymous. Euki also offers a "decoy" feature that shows fake, harmless information if someone gets your phone and tries to snoop.
*Shoshana Wodinsky, a privacy research analyst who tested 6 period tracker on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation
It's really sad to see that this is not the usual kind of software people are exposed too.
It indeed looks like the rest are "you're the product" (tm) type apps. Honestly, I don't expect much from Play Store (or App Store for that matter) these days but as a developer it's terrible what hoops you have to go through to publish your app.. Endless forms to fill out manually and then the overall store quality is just disappointing. Ads, ads, more ads and privacy and security debacles. Now it also looks like locking down on outside app stores like F-Droid.. Developers and hackers will find solutions but for the general population I'm not very hopeful. As to the period apps:
> This is also not Planned Parenthood's first run in with privacy criticisms. I wrote about similar problems four years ago, for example. The organisation didn't respond to a request for comment.
.. And it doesn't look like they care to change anything about it. Who can end this on a positive note? I hate to be this negative but I don't see it.
RudderStack founder here.
Although the article doesn't accuse us of doing anything improper, we weren't contacted for comment, so I'd like to clarify our role.
We are customer data infrastructure, not a data broker. We do not buy, sell or monetize the customer data that passes through our systems.
Our role is analogous to infrastructure: customers choose what data to send, and RudderStack routes that data to the destinations they configure (analytics tools, data warehouses, marketing platforms, etc.). The customer owns the data and decides where it goes; RudderStack does not repurpose it for its own business.
Infrastructure providers like us should be held to high standards for security and privacy, but we should not be confused with companies that collect or monetize end-user data.
Awesome insight. Thanks for clarifying! @bbc please update because there's definitely an implicit complicity in your article.