Insight Timer

Insight Timer, it’s gonna be a “meh” from us. Why aren’t we thrilled? So glad you asked. It’s time to have a look at what insights this app has about you. Aside from your registration details, they collect any information you feed the app while you’re poking around and joining meditation sessions — including your DMs. Then they collect data about what you do on the app, including what time and where you are when you do it.

And like we mentioned earlier, that also means they keep your responses to those pretty intimate-sounding in-app surveys that ask “about your health, mood, religious beliefs, race, gender, ethnicity, ancestry, physical disabilities, marital status, or sexual orientation.” Yeesh. But then they — wait what? Collect some more personal information about you like your “mailing address, your gender, your age, your household income, and other demographic data” from “privately owned databases” and combine it with what they already know about you. That's a whole lot of personal information Insight Timer is collecting on you. Does Russell Brand know about this?

When it gets to the part about what they do with the information, let’s say we could have benefited from some guided deep breathing exercises. Besides reasons like targeted ads, personalizing your experience and administrative tasks, they included one that's pretty vague (but also pretty commonly found in privacy policies) for our taste: for their “legitimate interests, or those of a relevant third party” like “improv[ing] the Services and for other business and commercial purposes.” We like that they say they won’t combine your health data with the rest of your information. But they do reserve the right to share that health data with research partners so long as it’s "anonymized." And if you want to erase your data? It’s not clear whether you can unless that’s your legal right where you live, which unfortunately, it mostly isn’t.

Lastly the app’s security practices leave something to be desired. Though they suggest using a strong password, they don’t really give users a hand in doing that. The registration form will accept a super simple one like "111111" and that makes us worry about the breachability of their accounts.

What's the worst that could happen with Insights Timer? Well, aside from your data being used to target you with more ads, just imagine if your very personal health data contributed to the publication of one of those awful studies that overgeneralizes about some generation or broad demographic. Like, Bisexual Zillenials Prefer Whispers to Raindrops For Sleeping. The world does not need any more of that!