About

In recent months (2022) there have been a number of news stories on the privacy risks to people using period tracking apps which collect sensitive data. Having worked for some years in the privacy and security space I was frustrated to see that some of the most popular period tracker apps were harvesting very sensitive user data which in my opinion wasn’t necessary to provide core functionality. As a result, period Privacy period was developed. There are several key design principles that promote privacy that we value including:

• Data minimization – avoid collecting data that isn’t needed

• Prefer client-side processing – processing data locally on the client (user’s phone) avoids propagating sensitive data to remote servers that the user has no control over

• Give the user control over their data – allow the user to delete their data or export it so they can take it somewhere else if they want to

Because we prioritize user privacy and simplicity as core values there are some tradeoffs to keep in mind:

Potential data loss: Because the user data isn’t sent to a server it means that if the user loses their phone or deletes the app then the data will also be lost (unless they have phone backups). However the benefit is knowing that your data remains under your direct control rather than a third party (and being able to test this using apple’s Privacy Report functionality). Even if a third party makes claims about protecting the privacy of the user data that they hold, there are many ways that the data can fall into other hands including being served warrants forcing handover, data breaches through malicious hacking and misconfiguration/user error.

Lack of parity across devices: Because there is no web-based user account and centrally stored user data, there is no option to be able to have data synced across multiple devices.

For the use case of period tracking there are many solutions which offer solutions that prioritize convenience over privacy. The app that I have built prioritizes privacy and simplicity.

You can download it for free for iOS.