Attention : *Confidentialité non incluse avec ce produit
Created in 2019, Liberate is a meditation app designed to be a "safe space for the Black community to develop a daily meditation habit." The app provides wellbeing practices that better fit the lives and experiences of the BIPOC community with meditations targeted as such things as microaggressions, internalized racism, and ancestral healing alongside those aimed at dealing with anxiety, depression, stress, and gratitude. Free to download, a yearly subscription grants users access to a library of over 240 meditations and talks, offline listening, and exclusive gatherings. Unfortunately, we do have a few concerns about how safe a space for your privacy Liberate is.
Que pourrait-il se passer en cas de problème ?
First reviewed April 20, 2022. Review updated, April 25, 2023
In 2023, we can't actually tell if the Liberate app is still supported, which is a concern as it still seems to be available for download in the Apple App Store (although we couldn't find it in the Google Play Store). We did manage to find a placeholder website that redirects from their original website with some basic information about the app. However, their privacy policy no longer seems to exist. The only privacy related information we could find was a statement on their placeholder website that simply states, "We respect your privacy" underneath a field to collect your email. All in all, we think this is a good app to skip for now as we can't confirm it is still supported, we can't find a privacy policy, and we don't know anything about their security practices.
Read our 2022 review:
Like many of the mental health apps we reviewed, Liberate raises a number of privacy questions and concerns for us. Take this line from their privacy policy, "We do not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties for their marketing purposes without your prior consent." We take this to mean they may sell or rent your personal information to third parties.
The consent question is always a big one for us. How clearly does Liberate ask for consent when they want to sell or rent your personal information? People often rapidly click through terms of service and privacy policy agreement asks when signing up for an app. If you don't read Liberate's privacy policy closely you won't know they say, "By accepting the Policy during registration, you expressly consent to our collection, storage, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Policy." Does that mean you consent to have your personal information (but not health data) sold, rented, and shared with a number of third parties for purposes such as personalization, advertising, marketing, and more when you accept their policy during registration? It sure seems so but we can't tell for sure. Giving your consent should never be this confusing. And this is probably way beyond what most people expect will happen with their personal information when rapidly clicking through the registration process during sign up. that worries us a great deal.
Liberate says they can collect a fair amount of personal information, including name, email address, photograph, geolocation, IP address, device identifiers, and Facebook profile information if you opt to sign into their services through Facebook (which you should never do). They then go on to say they may combine your information with information they collect from other sources. So much personal information, so many questions about if they're selling it to others. It's good they say they won't share your personal data with third parties in order for that third party to provide direct marketing communications to you.
We have too many questions to feel good about Liberate's privacy practices. And we can't determine if they meet our Minimum Security Standards in part because they never responded to our email with privacy and security related questions sent to contact listed in their privacy policy.
What's the worst that could happen? Well, we worry you could download the app, speed through the sign-up and registration process and click "agree" to their privacy policy without realizing that by doing so you may have just given Liberate consent to sell or rent your data to who knows who. Maybe that's not so terrible, maybe it is. Regardless, we would like to see a meditation app designed to help with your mental wellbeing do better at being a safe space for your privacy.
Conseils pour vous protéger
- Do not log in using third-party accounts like Facebook
- Do not give consent for sharing of personal data for marketing and advertisement.
- Chose a strong password! You may use a password control tool like 1Password, KeePass etc
- Do not use social media plug-ins.
- Use your device privacy controls to limit access to your personal information via app (do not give access to your camera, microphone, images, location unless neccessary)
- 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)
- Request your data be deleted once you stop using the app. Simply deleting an app from your device usually does not erase your personal data.
- When starting a sign-up, do not agree to tracking of your data if possible.
Ce produit peut-il m’espionner ?
Caméra
Appareil : Ne s’applique pas
Application : Oui
Microphone
Appareil : Ne s’applique pas
Application : Oui
Piste la géolocalisation
Appareil : Ne s’applique pas
Application : Non
Que peut-on utiliser pour s’inscrire ?
Adresse e-mail
Oui
Téléphone
Non
Compte tiers
Oui
Facebook log-in possible
Quelles données l’entreprise collecte-t-elle ?
Personnelles
No Privacy Policy publicly available for this product
Corporelles
Sociales
If you chose to invite a friend - their email address.
Comment l’entreprise utilise-t-elle les données ?
Comment pouvez-vous contrôler vos données ?
Quel est l’historique de l’entreprise en matière de protection des données des utilisateurs et utilisatrices ?
No known privacy or security incidents discovered in the last 3 years.
Ce produit peut-il être utilisé hors connexion ?
Informations relatives à la vie privée accessibles et compréhensibles ?
Liens vers les informations concernant la vie privée
- No privacy policy found
Ce produit respecte-t-il nos critères élémentaires de sécurité ?
Chiffrement
Mot de passe robuste
Mises à jour de sécurité
Gestion des vulnérabilités
Politique de confidentialité
Cette IA est-elle non digne de confiance ?
Quel genre de décisions l’IA prend-elle à votre sujet ou pour vous ?
L’entreprise est-elle transparente sur le fonctionnement de l’IA ?
Les fonctionnalités de l’IA peuvent-elles être contrôlées par l’utilisateur ou l’utilisatrice ?
Pour aller plus loin
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Mental health apps have terrible privacy protections, report findsThe Verge
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'Creepy' Mental Health And Prayer Apps Are Sharing Your Personal DataForbes
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Mental health and prayer apps have some of the worst privacy protections, study claims, finding they 'track, share and capitalize' on users intimate thoughts and feelingsDaily Mail
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Think meditation could help cope with microaggressions? There’s an app for that.The Washington Post
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Liberate Meditation ReviewOne Mind Psyber Guide
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This Meditation App Helps Users Heal From The Mental Health Impact Of RacismBustle
-
A New Meditation App for People of ColorTricycle
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Julio Rivera Created The Meditation App Liberate To Help The Black Community Healmitú
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Meet Julio Rivera, the founder of a meditation app designed for the Black communityIn The Know
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Black Founder Creates Meditation App for People of ColorBlack Enterprise
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Liberate: Meditation in a Safe SpaceTechAcute
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The Best Meditation Apps for a Moment of Calm in 2021Vogue
-
The Best Mental-Health Apps for POC, According to ExpertsThe Strategist
-
Choosing a mindfulness appMIT Medical
-
This Meditation App Was Created to Reduce Stress and Anxiety For BIPOCPopsugar
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