Privacy, and menstrual tracking apps

Here's an interview with Harvard Professor Sarah Richardson about her recent article raising concerns about menstrual tracking apps. She has doubts both about whether they give useful advice, and about the low or absent guardrails on the data they generate.

Alarm over menstrual tracking apps
GenderSci Lab director warns of health, privacy risks in medical journal analysis by Clea Simon 

"According to GenderSci Lab director Sarah Richardson, Aramont Professor of the History of Science and professor of studies of women, gender, and sexuality, the apps can dangerously mislead women while also exposing them to commercial exploitation and legal concerns. 

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"These apps are marketed as wellness and medical tools, but there are no protections on the data. Data is often sold, raising concerns for reproductive autonomy and privacy. Menstrual apps are unique compared to other kinds of digital trackers because they can expose reproductive and gender status.

"It is possible for there to be misuse of this data. This was deeply scrutinized after the Dobbs decision a couple of years ago with many scholars recommending that people not use these tracking apps, because there had been explicit threats made by regulators to try to access that data for use in criminal prosecution.

"Menstrual status can be used to give evidence of reproductive status. If the use of one of these apps exposed somebody as having been pregnant and then no longer being pregnant, for example, that could potentially be, in some jurisdictions, used either to discriminate against them or to implicate them criminally under laws that are meant to restrict abortion. "

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Here's the article in the BMJ:

Digital menstrual tracking risks creating more harm than benefit
BMJ 2026; 394 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2026-100858 (Published 30 September 2026) by  Lee, Katharine MN, Marina DiMarco, Madeleine Pape, Meredith Reiches, Patricia Homan, Sheree Bekker, Margo Mountjoy, and Sarah S. Richardson. 

"Digital menstrual tracking apps claim to scientifically analyse individual data to provide guidance that will improve health, wellbeing, and performance based on estimated menstrual cycle phase. But neither digital menstrual tracking nor related practices of cycle syncing—that is, synchronising physical activity and nutrition to menstrual cycle phases—have been convincingly shown to improve health or other performance outcomes. Moreover, these practices raise serious concerns, given their risks of harm."