When tracking your period lets companies track you
npr.org
npr.org
I figured all those “free” (and possibly even the paid) baby apps were likely doing all sorts of shady things with that data. One thing for me to use a period/fertility tracker for myself - quite another to throw my child’s data up to god knows who for god knows what ends long before he could possibly consent.
If you don’t know why it matters how many diapers there have been in the last 24 hours and what kind of mess was in there, along with how often and how much milk was consumed, you’ve obviously not been the primary caretaker of an infant recently. If you don’t know why you’d want an app for that, ditto - “mommy brain” is real.
Pro-tip: set up and test your Baby Buddy instance well before your due date - including having your partner try using it on their device.
In fact, we almost had a problem due to "too much data tracking": in the first weeks, there was a point in which the baby hadn't gained weight for a week so the pediatrician suggested to give up exclusive breastfeeding and give him some formula to complement it. After some thought, we decided against it: we were quite aware of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding, saw that the baby was otherwise looking and behaving fine, thought that the data on such short term maybe would not be significant, and gave him another week without changing anything. Next week, the baby was growing just fine, and he was exclusively breastfed until 6 months.
That said, if there's something I have learned as a parent is not to judge other parents, because no one knows what the right style of parenting is (and even when we know that option X is better than option Y, real life often makes it impossible to implement). So if data tracking apps work for some parents, more power to them, of course.
I have observed that one of the biggest causes of bad relationships between parents and their children -- and subsequent life problems for the children -- is when parents try to assert too much control. It's a fine line between responsibility and control, and the quality and quantity of information you need for the former before it becomes more of the latter.
The question is: do you need what the app gives you to fulfill your responsibilities, or do you just want it to satisfy your urges?
> do you need what the app gives you to fulfill your responsibilities, or do you just want it to satisfy your urges?
There's a third option, which is that while not strictly necessary, certain tools can help make a job easier, so why not take advantage of them? I agree with you about having to be careful about control vs responsibility when raising a kid, but I'm not sure a baby poo tracker is crossing that line.
Even if the data aren’t strictly needed, having them makes an interesting, important but difficult job a little easier to bear.
Sure. If you insist on doing the unnecessary, possibly harmful job there are plenty of consumer grifts you can join that are waiting to relieve you of your money or exploit you for profit in some other way, like tracking and reselling your personal information. There is, after all, a sucker born every minute. Some of them have recently become parents.
But that's not a third option. That's just satisfying your urges.
You haven't engaged with the point being made -- that the tools _might_ actually make the job easier.
You're just reiterating your view that "I didn't need these tools, so they are at best worthless and and at worst exploitative"
If not, you have no idea what it’s like. If so, can you accept that you had a different experience than another parent??
We’re all different, our little people are different and parenting is lonely. Instead of jumping in with our hot takes on what will work best for another person’s child, why can’t we just say:
“That’s cool. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of…”
We’re not talking about object oriented design patterns, there’s no need to be pedantic and nobody wins if one person is right. This is parenting.
I treasure the detailed baby book she kept about me, though. My nerdy app data is helping me backfill one for my own son, who may or may not be interested in it once he has a kid.
Maybe I’m more sensitive to it because I’m a single parent and have faced my own judgment. But dude, other parents can be awful to parents. It’s not okay. Let’s just be kind - parenting is hard enough without every expert telling you that based on their experience with their 1.75 children, you’re wrong.
they were responding to a comment about a self-hosted web app, so it's not even relevant
> doesn't imply you're evil
Just that you're doing something "possibly harmful", you're "a sucker", and you're "just satisfying your urges". But, sure, not evil.
Yeah, they were shit comments, people aren't over reacting by asking how they could possibly be helpful.
Agreed completely! We used (and are still using, for the infant) a homebrew spreadsheet with a pen and a clipboard. Worked incredibly well for all 3 of our children, who are all under 3 years of age. No apps here, no thanks.
edit/ And, best of all, we didn't have to sort out any bullshit software compatibility issues with our friends or family when they were in the house helping. There's no data export/exfiltration problems. When we wanted to share the feeding log, nap schedule, sleep schedule, diaper changing log, etc., for our twins with a couple we're friends with who had their own twins... I spent maybe 10 minutes scanning 18 months of spreadsheets and emailed it over.
But honestly, is there really much value in knowing e.g. exactly how much and how frequently our babies feed? I mean, if you've had a baby you will know that feeding is purely instinctive, they are wired for it, and if they're hungry they are very well equipped to let you know by crying at a volume that would put Motörhead at shame. Nature (through the baby) gives us plenty of messaging about how and when he needs food, it's just a matter of interpreting it. And all babies are different, so are you sure that some table or general guidelines will give you better information than the babies themselves will provide? And are you sure it's worth spending your scarce energy and thoughts, as a sleep-starved parent, on doing that kind of tracking?
Anyway, as I mentioned in a different post above, I don't judge anyone on these issues. Different things might work for different people. If these apps work for many parents and help them implement the kind of parenting they see fit, more power to them. For me they're a distraction from actually communicating and getting to know my son, but to each their own!
For some caregivers and babies, absolutely! Child birth and rearing, like many things, has a _lot_ of edge cases that most people who go through the process never experience or consider. There are cases where tracking closely on different aspects of baby’s habits or development may be crucial to more positive outcomes for the baby.
> And are you sure it's worth spending your scarce energy and thoughts, as a sleep-starved parent, on doing that kind of tracking?
Honestly this is one of the primary reasons Baby Buddy exists. If I as a caregiver have (or want!) to track some specific details about a baby I’d much rather do it on a device I have available to me most of the time (my phone) and without having to worry about paper, pen, manual calculations, seeing those things at night, etc. This is absolutely personal opinion, but you asked! (:
Disclaimer: I am the maintainer of Baby Buddy.
Do you want me to judge every aspect of your parenting? Do my thoroughly unqualified opinions help in any way??
It’s really interesting. OP shared a story about what works for their child. Rather than just leave it be, you judge it, conclude that it’s going to be a cause of a bad relationship between parent and child and then turn it around so it makes the parent seem selfish.
Has it ever occurred to you that none of really know what we’re doing? And that unless you happen to be a highly trained professional in one of about three areas, you’re not qualified to say things like that??
Finally, do you ever think about how lonely parenting can be because of judgmental people like you??
Look, we have enough doubt. What’s wrong with just being kind?? Did implying that OP will have a bad relationship with their child build you up??
If so, what are you teaching your children? And what’s up with the judging? Who cares what other parents do?? It’s frankly none of your business.
I read disagreement in those words, but no real sense of acrimony, until your post attempted to cast one comment as somehow being unfairly judgemental of another.
What you're calling out is nothing more than a reasonable conversation and disagreement on the efficacy of using apps to help with parenting. One parent thinks they can be useful, and another thinks they are unnecessary and that many parents receive empty utility from it.
It's OK for people to have a conversation about that and disagree. As a parent myself, having conversations with other parents (and non-parents) about child-rearing approaches, and running into disagreements, and talking those over.. is all pretty normal.
It's a complex topic. I think people see their children as an opportunity to make things right, to produce a person without their flaws and traumas, who is able to live the good life, so they suddenly turn on this whole 'morality/ethics' bit of their brain that they haven't really used since they were like, seven.
As a result, they're really bad at it, really insecure of their conclusions, and really dogmatic. The cool thing is, it's not even along political lines. Everybody is judgemental.
Continuing this is not useful. I wrote a high mer level comment and gave OP a bit of the support they deserve.
Just maybe reflect on how you treat people and think about how this thread might impact people in the thick of it. Sometimes, it’s more valuable to hear “good work” than another unqualified person’s hot take bases upon their own complete strangers.
How far do you apply this model? Passenger airbags in your automobile too?
S is the target, not S[X] for either instantiation.
To further complicate matters, my son wasn’t waking up on his own to feed often enough. When I just let him set the pace, he slowly lost weight when he should have been gaining. Additional complication: Covid causing us to be completely on our own those first few months.
Tracking feeding times and weights made the problem more visible, and diapers calmed me down (he wasn’t dehydrated!), and drove me to supplement with formula and to seek out a lactation consultant, who got me to start pumping. Tracking that output let me slowly switch him out of formula back to my milk. My grandmother gave up nursing after a week when her first child was never satisfied, and my mother never attempted it (80s in Texas).
Now that he’s a robust toddler who eats pretty much anything in reach, I no longer bother with food and diaper tracking, but still track temperatures when he’s got a cold because our daycare has strict rules about time since last temperature over 38 before being allowed to return.
So yes, I needed a way to see how often he was feeding and how long, along with matching that up to weight changes. Could I have done it on paper? Sure. Was it easier with the web app? Yes.
Data collection from the beginning helped ensure that I wasn’t inadvertently starving my kid when he was shockingly uninterested in nursing, and I wanted to remind people that there’s another way to accomplish that than the class of terrible, privacy-invading apps heavily marketed to women about aspects of our lives we would otherwise consider the details of to be private.
I’m sorry if you had overly-controlling parents. I happily didn’t, beyond normal Texas Baptist notions of morality, and see my main job right now as keeping him from getting severely injured before he’s old enough to understand heat, gravity and chocking hazards.
So far, the biggest benefits to tracking:
- Knowing how long we have until the next feeding. I swear he has a three hour timer in him somewhere.
- Knowing if one of us already gave him certain medications today.
- Calculating average amounts over the week before a pediatrician visit.
And, like all logging, it only shows its value in hindsight.
The benefit to the Baby Buddy approach is that whatever device with a web browser was closest to hand was where I could enter what just happened, or happened a few hours ago, because it was highly unlikely that I’d have entered a bunch of stuff I’d kept on paper into CSV.
I don't want to downplay your software and your effort but my wife and I raised two wonderful baby girls without any app tracking how many diapers we changed or how many poo they did. We only had to be a bit more "strict" on weight-gain tracking for the 1st one during her first 2 months or so because she was born quite small and we had some issues breastfeeding her at the beginning. I understand there might be situations where it is useful to track some data of the infant but I would say it's just if there is some underlying condition.
Our little people are all different and we all love our little people so we adapt to them the best we can. (My child is almost six, so at this point, ‘she adapts me’.) :)
You seem like a wonderful parent and I really dig your attention to detail. :)
Thanks for sharing Baby Buddy. My child was almost two when it was released. But holy crow, that would have been helpful!! :)
The times they are a-changin’
I kind of get why a lot of people react negatively. If you had the happy path, you think lactation consultants are ridiculous (what’s more natural than a baby sucking a boob?!), and of course the baby’s going to cry when he’s hungry, and he’ll be hungry when he needs to eat. And what are grandmothers and aunts and friends with older kids for, but to help the new mother learn her job and to point out to her when they think something’s not quite right with the baby that they’re constantly dropping by to cuddle?
Hi. Welcome to having a kid an ocean away from your close friends, a decade after your mother died, at a point in the pandemic when we were hearing promising news about vaccines being developed and quick, cheap tests on demand were a fantasy.
Thanks, by the way, for contributing! We have long passed our own need for the app with our little ones but it has been a joy to maintain and interact with Baby Buddy’s users over the years.
Definitely curious to know if anyone has done any real research on this generally — that is, whether there is a real market for the “privacy focused” version of any product that would have other cheaper, less privacy focused options.
However, no surprise. Literally every app anymore ought to be considered from the perspective of, "What can this app possibly get from my phone, by technical standards, regardless of what I think of that?" It's got accelerometer data and gyro data? It's doing something nasty with it. It's got location data? Oh, baby, hope it's precise! Contact list data? Call data? Wifi network data? Bluetooth data? Yeah, all of that going upstream for those juicy revenue streams on the backend.
I mean, RobinHood is literally doing nothing but selling order streams to high frequency trading companies to front-run the transactions people are making "for free."
There is no such thing as an app anymore that works in your interest, as a guiding first order principle.
> Their rebuttal to all this surveillance, of the commodification of our behaviors as users is simple: personal empowerment and regulation.
Oh. Well then. Maybe they'd be so kind as to offer a pony to go with "personal empowerment," and perhaps some recommendations or written regulation that might go with the second?
There's Free Software.
Many (relatively) expensive paid apps are also fully pro-user.
I know such things exist for "cruelty-free" (i.e. no animal testing) -- why not for "MBA tech bullshit free?"
I don't use Android and I don't have periods, so unfortunately I can't really tell how decent they are - but they both look somewhat reasonable on screenshots.
Hey there’s still a few of us left. I am the developer of mood tracker MoodWell, a similar genre apps as this post. Users input a ton of their private data in the app- from their mood and emotions data to what activities they are doing, notes, photos, weather etc. to track their mental health and how it’s affected by different activities, weather etc.
This is very personal data and that’s why my app keeps all this data locally. Only if they use iCloud sync between multiple devices, then it goes to Apple iCloud server. But none of that ever gets sent to me and I have no control or access over their data.
I have similar reputation about privacy for my other apps including my hacker news client app HACK, school timetable app, resume builder website etc. my resume builder website even builds the resume pdf locally in the browser and no data gets sent to any server.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/moodwell-moody-tracker-diary/i...
> E TOGNI: Since I've started using Flo, every time my period is late, even just by one day, I receive ads on Facebook, Google and YouTube about pregnancy tests all the time. And then if I'm late for more than one day, I receive other ads about family planning, how to have a healthy baby. And, you know, a lot of products are just advertised to me constantly. I'm bombarded with this. And this happens every month for the past six years (laughter).
AGGGH. That's not "funny, cute, lulz." That's "Remove from phone and never look back!"
I'm glad to see surveillance capitalism in the general discussion, but, man, it's depressing just how much it's taken over literally everything in the past decade.
So while not perfect, I think Tracker Control works exceedingly well in practice. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that.
If you're in the EU it'll show you a GDPR choice then refer you to the text-only article if you decline:
https://text.npr.org/1068930998
(have to say, of all the news sources NPR handles this the best)
There is a solution for some (ex: my Xiaomi bluetooth scale) but not others.
However, should I install even one such app, I do not trust it will avoid listening to the BLE broadcast of data coming from other devices, and send it home.
Recently, this was a problem on the Wyze Watch which includes among other things a period tracker. I ended up replacing it by a Garmin eSports Watch: while the Wyze is a wonderful device (oh boy do I miss the puse oxymeter for O2 saturation...), it requires an app on the phone: if you uninstall it, the Wyze will work for a while... until it accumulates too much data.
After that, it presents various symptoms (ex: unable to pair) that end up with the touchscreen not working after a few month.
The Garmin can apparently be run autonomously and doesn't seem to have this problem (so far!) that seems to be cause by a lack of rollover/delete.
If it works as it should, with no app, I will replace it after a few months by a more advanced model like the Forerunner 945 that includes a pulse oximeter.
If it can't delete data on its own (without any phone pairing), I will look for another device that can work without a phone.
In any case, I will not let my health-related data be exfiltrated, even for something as innocent as a bluetooth toothbrush.
This article seems to support my almost luddite approach!
Back when I had access to a decently-sized database of scraped app data, a sure-fire way to find hidden gems was to search for apps that did not ask for internet access.
Of course Google does not let you filter for that in any way in the app store, because people making and sharing apps without aggressively monetising them does not make money for Google.
anyone who made fun of people for tech paranoia should be feeling pretty ashamed of themselves right about now for what we've allowed to become commonplace,
while simultaneously acknowledging it's only enabled by society ghosting its responsibility to learn tech.
Like, dear watch, how's my sex, birthday, size and weight gonna help you do your job?
I got you to 1) show the time 2) have alarms that I can set without using the phone, like in bed 3) monitor my sleep 4) check my heartrate and saturation when I exercise.
There's literally 0 reason to have my birthday, so I went by january 1st :)
But it shouldn't even have been asked in the 1st place.
> what we've allowed to become commonplace
We should not allow it anymore. A smart device that insist on having an app on a phone to be usable won't get my $$$.
Come on. Every single one of those is an input for modelling calorie burn. If you don't want your watch to try and estimate that, that's fine - but it's pretty obvious why a fitness tracker would have those features.
- https://f-droid.org/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadgetb...
It's definitely not a very sophisticated device, but it tracks my heart rate and activity and can track my walking routes if I want it to. And the data never leaves my devices.
Whether or not they invade your privacy, they reduce your idea of your health to a set of numbers that are divorced from the actual reality of your life and your overall wellbeing. Just abstain!
Not everyone does it, but most of the folks that don't will do so if they are doing things like trying to get pregnant, know when their mood will change, or are having other issues. I'm pretty sure that menstruation issues are the real thing that lowers your overall wellbeing. I've experienced this very thing, and I've needed the dates when things have gone wrong... or simply when I have had to go to the hospital/doctors, since they always seem to ask when I first started my last period.
Something on your phone simply makes it easier, especially since most folks take their phones into the bathroom with them from time to time. I just use a notetaking app, though, mostly due to privacy.
We know that there are benefits to tracking your blood pressure at home, for example[0].
In addition, and closer to the topic in the original link, there are simply concrete benefits (ie: birth control) to an app like Natural Cycles[1], which involves tracking your temperature and period in an app. I understand that for some people this type of additional option may be difficult to appreciate, especially if you're not a potential user. It requires a lot of discipline: taking your temp consistently and at just the right time. But for women who might not be interested in or respond well to hormonal birth control, it can be an invaluable tool.
Even for normal period tracking apps: tracking one's period _can_ be useful. It can help to monitor fluctuations that would otherwise easily go unnoticed for longer than they need to. I've had friends who missed very early or late periods for months before they realized their schedule was off and that it might be something they should see a doctor about.
In conclusion, this "all apps/tracking health data is useless" sentiment that gets thrown around so commonly does not really seem to be in touch with reality.
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/how-to-monitor-a...
[1] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-allo...
This is such a disgusting, predatory invasion of privacy and it's as pervasive as portrayed in the podcast [1]. These companies should be hit with huge financial penalties and the full force of GDPR should be dropped on them, but I'm sure by now, the largest companies have found loopholes to share personal information that can be used to market to individuals without it being considered personally identifiable...
One thing absent from the podcast however was an alternative. My partner on finding out about the data sale going on with period trackers (and having their mind poisoned with the concept of open source by me!) found Drip [2] which is an open source period tracker that's accurate, not exploitative, and not pink.
[1] https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys...
Confine ads to known spaces you can visit and expect to be advertised to.
You can still find new products, but the economic incentives behind surveillance capitalism are gone.
[2] is the non-paywalled NYT article being discussed and linked to in the thread.
It starts: “Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: ‘If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?’”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
Distributed machine learning makes it possible to proffer data for insights without necessarily sharing it off-device. And unlocking some functionality in exchange.
I'm sure more elaborate patterns of exchanges are possible. Is anyone working on this?
It should be made clear to users which apps are using the network connection.
Because on the plus side this apps can help detect health issues on the population, in certain areas or on people taking certain drugs
Covid vaccines linked to 'disrupted menstrual cycles in young women' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-covid-vaccine-might-im...
This discussions applies to using most free online services/apps, strange we don't see this discussion more often
GDPR helps, but is by far not a panacea, since there are so many offenders. One case that stuck into my mind was that of a friend which used an app by a German company which advertised the fact that they were keeping data on-device and not doing any analysis. One day after an update the app was blocked by a full-screen dialog presenting new terms of service claiming that data had to be synced to the cloud. There was only an accept button and no way to opt out or export the data.
The only company that I'd trust now with this kind of data is Apple. And even there and in spite of all the security and privacy measures they have in place, I would be wary of syncing to the cloud.
By the way, there is no 'reject' option for npr.org, just 'Agree and Continue'.
I'm not sure whether there's a difference between this and what they're reporting on, but I wasn't willing to accept to find out.
Not making it say “disagree” or “reject” seems a bit dark-pattern-y, and making a button captioned “your choices” dump you straight at the leave-it side of take-it-or- make it seem like a snarky punishment for even daring to prefer not to be stalked online, but at least the option exists.
If you're implying hypocrisy, I don't think it exists here. News companies sharing data with advertisers (so, nearly all of them) should absolutely be reporting on this issue. If I got/tracked periods, this is information I would want to know.
The reason we are in this privacy hell is the confusion between technology, ie cookies, and personal information, ie sensitive information about people and their lives that get traded like commodity goods. It is how technology is used that matters.