Should you delete your period-tracking app? | Hacker News Reader

Should you delete your period-tracking app?

techcrunch.com

15 pointsfortran779 comments

Reading this article was infuriating - it treats apps as wholly sovereign entities, limited in what they do only by the promises of whichever startup developed them, and that there is nothing else users can do to find out if an app is spying on them, or to stop it. The mention of permissions is brief and not expanded upon.

One would expect a tech-focused site to educate its readers better, e.g. explaining that an app without network permissions cannot spy on them (but may store data on their phone, in case it is searched..), and that there exist trustworthy free-software period-tracking apps, that aren't revenue-maximizing black-boxes.

The article seems designed to teach users helplessness.

> (but may store data on their phone, in case it is searched..)

Or other apps cooperate to exfiltrate.

Only if you are on Android using the write to SD storage permission or if you explicitly enabled integration with third party services on iOS. By default the apps (on iOS at least) have their data rather tightly sandboxed.

Tightly enough for a state trojan used in investigating "murder"?

If you have a state level adversary with easy access to zero days then all bets are off. There is no way to attain true security without formally verifying the entire software and hardware stack from the lowest level networking baseband to the userland applications. The alternative is to have a specialised airgapped hardware health tracker that is inaccessible without physical interaction.

A third of all women use apps to track their period? For some reason I find that hard to believe

Why is this so unbelievable? As in, is the number too high or too low? Because out of two relationships I've been in my life, both of them used apps to track periods and had near 100% accuracy doing so. Not that it should be used as a replacement for other forms of contraception, rather with, or just as an information.

In the US? That's not too surprising to me. I think the standard way is to just use a calendar though.

I'm going to guess that you don't ovulate? They are wildly popular and useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com