Advertencia: *Privacidad no incluida con este producto
What to Expect Pregnancy Tracker & Baby App
Well dang. Here's something you might not expect when you're expecting -- the company that describes itself as "the world’s best known, most trusted pregnancy and parenting brand," to collect, use, share, and even SELL as much information on you as it seems they possibly can. Yikes! What to Expect, a brand built on helping parents know exactly what's going on during their pregnancy week by week, offers an app that lets you do that, gives you themed baby size comparisons, helpful daily tips during your pregnancy, a baby milestone tracker, and tons more. All that sounds great, and your privacy researcher (who has never been pregnant) has heard many of her friends talk about this brand glowingly. But when it comes to protecting and respecting the privacy of their users, well, YIKES! The incredible amount of personal information they say they can collect, use, share, and even sell in their privacy policy was certainly not something we expected. So much for the most "trusted" pregnancy brand out there, huh. Oh, and the company that owns What to Expect also owns another app called Babycenter, the have basically the same privacy policy. So, beware of both apps.
¿Qué podría pasar si algo falla?
Everyday Health, the company that owns pregnancy app Babycenter (and the pregnancy app What to Expect too), just comes right out and admits they plan to sell personal information they collect on you. At least they are honest and straightforward about it in their lengthy and dense privacy policy, we'll give them that.
Selling your personal information isn't all they plan to do with it either. They say they can share it with lots of third party advertisers for targeted behavioral advertising. They can take your data and gather more data on you from sources like social media, public sources, and data brokers to build an even bigger profile on you with all your data. They say they they can use that data for lots of personalization and targeted marketing and advertising to try and sell you more goods and services. It seems there is a whole lot of money to be made using the personal information of pregnant women and expecting families. Which makes sense when they say they can collect a whole lot of your personal information --everything from your name, email, phone number to your due date, gender of your baby, education, work experience, precise location, browsing history, views and opinions, photographs, and much more. Yikes!
We're not even sure all users can request this data they collect on you be deleted if that want. Everyday Health was actually kinda vague about that in their privacy policy and we're not clear if users outside of the EU and California who are protected by stronger privacy laws have the same rights to access and delete their data. Not good.
And if you're worried this company could turn over to law enforcement that sensitive personal information they admit using to track you right there in the Apple app store data privacy section (seriously, go check that out), well, we're right there with you (and others are too). Their privacy policy says things like, "we may disclose your User Information to: [...] legal and regulatory authorities, upon request" and "Subject to applicable law, we reserve the right to release information concerning any user of Services when we have grounds to believe that the user... has engaged in (or we have grounds to believe is engaging in) any illegal activity, and to release information in response to court and governmental orders, other requests from government entities, civil subpoenas, discovery requests and otherwise as required by law or regulatory obligations." That seems to indicate Everyday Health might give up a users' data through voluntary disclosure, which is a policy we really kinda hate here at Mozilla. We much prefer when companies state 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 go what with the Babycenter pregnancy app. Holy crap, soooo much. It's possible your data could be sold and used to track and see if you were pregnant and there weren't which could flag you as someone who might have had an abortion, which is not great in our post Roe vs Wade world. It's also possible your data could be sold to someone looking to target pregnant women with crazy advertisements aimed at getting them to name their baby Superduperawesomechildnumerouno, and then we have a whole bunch of kids running around with that name, and yeah, we don't want that either. Seriously, though, there is a whole lot that could go wrong with a company that seems to disregard their user's privacy to the degree Everyday Health does. Please understand, this app comes with *Privacy Not Included.
Consejos para protegerte
- Opt-out of the sale of personal information by a business, by submitting a request via https://dsar.whattoexpect.com or email [email protected] !
- When you no longer use the app, go to "Delete app data" in the app menu
- Chose a strong password! You may use a password control tool like 1Password, KeePass etc.
- Do not give access to your files and media or location.
- Use your device privacy controls to limit access to your personal information via app (do not give access to your camera, microphone, images and videos)
- Keep your app regularly updated
- Limit ad tracking via your device (eg on iPhone go to Privacy -> Advertising -> Limit ad tracking) and biggest ad networks (for Google, go to Google account and turn off ad personalization)
¿Me puede espiar?
Cámara
Dispositivo: No aplica
Aplicación: No
Micrófono
Dispositivo: No aplica
Aplicación: No
Rastrea la ubicación
Dispositivo: No aplica
Aplicación: Sí
¿Qué se puede usar para registrarse?
Correo electrónico
Sí
Teléfono
No
Cuenta de terceros
No
¿Qué datos recopila la empresa?
Información personal
Your name; precise location; your due date; gender; age/date of birth; nationality; salutation; job title, company information, education, work experience and other professional information; postal address; telephone and/or mobile number; email address; and your public social media handles or profile(s).
Información biométrica
Information provided in response to quizzes or surveys or to use certain health-related programs, such as supporting healthy pregnancies; and photograph (if you or another user posts a photo on the Service).
Información social
¿Cómo utiliza la empresa estos datos?
¿Cómo puedes controlar el uso de tus datos?
¿Qué historial tiene la compañía en cuanto a la protección de los datos de los usuarios?
No known privacy or security incidents discovered in the last 3 years.
Información sobre privacidad infantil
¿El producto se puede usar sin conexión?
¿La información de privacidad es fácil de entender?
Enlaces a información de privacidad
¿El producto cumple nuestros estándares mínimos de seguridad?
Cifrado
Contraseña fuerte
Actualizaciones de seguridad
Gestiona las vulnerabilidades
Política de privacidad
Profundiza más
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Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade: Should you delete your period-tracking app?TechCrunch
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