ICO to Review Period and Fertility Tracking Apps

ICO (The Information Commissioner’s Office) is reviewing period and fertility apps as new figures show more than half of women have concerns over data security.

A poll commissioned by the regulator showed a third of women have used apps to track periods or fertility. The research showed over half of people who use the apps believed they had noticed an increase in baby or fertility-related adverts since signing up. While some found the adverts positive, 17% described receiving these adverts as distressing.

The poll revealed that women said transparency over how their data was used (59%) and how secure it was (57%) were bigger concerns than cost (55%) and ease of use (55%) when it came to choosing an app.

A focus of the ICO's work is to identify whether there is the potential for harm and negative impact on users as a result. These harms could include unnecessarily complicated and confusing privacy policies, apps requesting or storing unnecessary volumes of data, or users receiving upsetting targeted advertising that they did not sign up to.

You can find further information here.

Kind regards,

Zumbul Attorneys-at-Law

info@zumbul.av.tr