Youper

First reviewed April 20, 2022. Review updated, April 25, 2023

In 2022, Youper's privacy policy raised a bunch of eyebrows for us. In 2023, things look much better. They seem to share much less data. In fact, according to their privacy policy, they seem to share almost no data with third parties (we hope!). Yay for getting better in 2023 Youper. And more good news from Youper, they updated their password requirement to require a strong password after we reached out them in 2023. Youper is doing much better this year indeed, and might just be our most improved app overall.

One thing we should mention we'd love to see Youper do better though. They drop new people into a questionnaire asking sensitive personal questions before giving users an opportunity to review a privacy policy and see how the answers to these questions might be used or protected. That's a practice we really don't like, and one too many mental health app companies seem to use.

Read our 2022 review:

Yikes Youper! When you say you're "the only mental health service that understands you," it seems maybe you mean that literally.

Youper's privacy policy says they can collect a whole lot of personal information. Everything from name, address, email, birth date, race, religion, sexual orientation and political beliefs, to "Information stored on your mobile device, including in other applications" and even real-time information about the location of your devices. Heck, when you download the Youper app, it asks for permission to access your wearable sensor data (like heart rate monitors). They even say they "will combine information we receive from other sources with information you give to us and information we collect about you." Yikes again!

Not only does Youper collect a ton of personal information, they say they can share this personal information with a number of subsidiaries, affiliates, and third parties, including for marketing purposes. Now, not all that personal information can be used or shared with third parties for things like marketing purposes -- they say personal health information won't be shared with third parties for marketing purposes without your consent, for example. But a lot of that information can be used and shared with third parties for things like targeted advertising and that's what worries us.

That's a whole lot of personal information Youper collects that you really have to hope they keeps secure. Just a reminder, they say on their own privacy page, "Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our Website and App; any transmission is at your own risk." This is a good reminder, what you share on the internet is never, ever 100% safe and secure.

Is there more that worries us? Yeah, there's more. Youper says they "may disclose aggregated, de-identified information about our users, and information that does not identify any individual, without restriction." Here's where we remind you that such de-identified data has been found to be relatively easy to re-identify, especially if location data is included. And Youper doesn't meet our Minimum Security Standards as we were able to login to the app with the weak password "111111". Requiring a strong password on an app that collects and stores so much personal information seems like an easy way to show you care about protecting the privacy of yours users. Too bad Youper doesn't do that.

So yeah, Youper's huge personal data collection and rather scary privacy and security practices leave us thinking there might be better apps to help you manage your anxiety and depression. What's the worst that could happen? Uhg, we don't even want to go there. It would really suck if your personal profile leaked and went up for sale on the dark web where a sketchy group of bad guys accessed it and used it to make your life miserable by outing your mental health problems to the world. Nobody needs that.