WebMD Pregnancy

You know the number one rule of the internet, "If something is free, then you're the product"? Yeah, we'd say that very much applies here with WebMD's pregnancy tracking app. The app is free, as is all that free health advice you can get on their website. Which is great. What is not great is that means you're being tracked and targeted based on your health questions and app usage. WebMD accepts advertising from third parties on it's own WebMD Network. That typically comes with lots of tracking of you around WebMD properties, including the WebMD pregnancy app. It also seems WebMD shares, and possibly sells, information on their users to third parties for advertising purposes. Again, WebMD's product is free, so the personal and usage data they collect on you is the business asset they get in return to monetize for lots of advertising. Is this the way the internet pretty much works these days? Unfortunately, yes. Is it rather scary when you're sharing personal information about your pregnancy and other health concerns and symptoms? Absolutely!

And WebMD does say the can collect a good deal of personal information on users. Things like name, address, telephone number, gender, email address and date of birth, precise location, health-related information such as symptoms, app and website usage data, unique device identifier, and more. They go on to say they can collect even more data about your from external, third party sources to combine with the data they already have on you to be able to target you even better with ads both on and off WebMD services. They say the data they collect this way includes "age, gender, demographic, geographic, personal interests, product purchase activity or other information." So, WebMD and their pregnancy app are likely collecting a whole bunch of data on you from lots of places. The more they know about you, the better.

WebMD says they can share your information with a pretty large group of third parties including, "subsidiaries, affiliates and companies acquired by or merged with us and our affiliates," "third party companies and contractors that help us provide the Service," and third party advertising service providers.

And how do they say they can us this data? Well, for lots and lots of targeted, interested-based advertising, of course. Also for things like personalization, to market good and services, and do research and to offer "lead generation services" (basically, helping business find new customers based on demographics they collect). Reminder, you are the product.

How does WebMD say they will handle law enforcement requests? They say in their privacy policy, "To cooperate with government authorities and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with law, we may release personal information to third parties: (1) to comply with legal requirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order; (2) when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request; or (3) in special cases, such as in response to a physical threat to you or others..." Which isn't as clear a statement as we'd like to see here at Mozilla. We'd like to see WebMD (and all products we review) clearly state they won't disclose user data voluntarily, and that they won't give up user data to law enforcement unless required to under subpoena, and even then, we like to see them commit to only giving up the bare minimum necessary.

What's the worst that could happen if you chose to use the WebMD Pregnancy app? Well, you could get inundated with ads for everything remotely related to pregnancy and becoming a parent, spend way too much money on things you don't need, and then be broke when the baby comes. Shoot, that might not be the worst thing that could happen, but it sure does sound crappy. Here's some good advice from WebMD we actually recommend you consider, "If you do not want your personal information used by WebMD as provided in this Privacy Policy, you should not use the WebMD Sites, Apps and Services."