Sanvello

Sanvello says they can collect a lot of personal information, including name, email, gender, location, birth date, mood, health and biometric data, thought records, messages with your coach, and more. And they say the may combine all this personal data with information they get from other sources, such as potentially data brokers and advertising companies. And they say they may use and disclose de-identified and aggregated data for any purpose (here's where we remind you such de-identified data has been found to be relatively easy re-identify, especially if location data is included.) Red flags for us.

How do they say they can use all this data they collect on you? Sanvello says they can share your personal information with third party researcher partners for health or behavioral research purposes. They can share information about your use of Sanvello with health insurers or health plan administrators to evaluate your care (they say they won't share your thought records with health insurers). And Sanvello says they can use your personal information for advertising and promotional purposes. Finally, Sanvello adds that they can use your personal information "as otherwise necessary or useful for us to conduct our business, so long as such use is permitted by law or for any other purpose with your consent." That last part feels kinda broad and vague to us. Guess what, more red flags. 🚩 🚩 🚩

One last red flag with Sanvello. We emailed them multiple times as the email listed in their privacy policy for privacy-related questions and Sanvello didn't respond with answers to our privacy and security questions. So, we can't confirm if Sanvello meets our Minimum Security Standards.

What's the worst that could happen with Sanvello? Well, we suppose it's possible you could think it normal for a mental health app (or any app, but especially one that collects so much personal information) to collect and share so much of your personal information and get used to that as the norm in the world and completely give up on having any privacy at all. That's sounds terrible. Let's never let that happen.