Natural Cycles - Birth Control

The good news first. Natural Cycles states very clearly in their privacy policy and their data privacy mission statement that they will never sell your data. Yay! That's something, even if the bare minimum of what we hope to see for privacy protections. And because Natural Cycles is a Swedish-based company, their privacy policy says they comply with stricter European GDPR privacy regulations for all users, regardless of where a you live. This is more good news. That means all users have strong rights to access and delete their data too.

Are there things with Natural Cycles that worry us? Yes, a few. One, they do collect a whole bunch of personal, sensitive, and health related information on you. A whole bunch. Remember, once that data is out in the world, you have to trust that it will remain secure. And while Natural Cycles does state that they take strong security measures to protect this data, and we believe them on this, nothing ever shared on the internet is 100% secure.

Natural Cycles also does indicate they use data such as IP and device information and anonymized email addresses for social media marketing purposes. They don't share any sensitive personal information for this purpose though. And Natural Cycles does use cookies, including third party services that may collect data about your site visits for marketing purposes. None of this is great. But, as this mostly all seems to be anonymized or data limited of direct personal information, it's also not an uncommon practice for most companies.

Natural Cycles does say they can ask for consent to share personal data for research purposes. They say, "If we have your consent, we will use your User Data and other Personal Data that you may provide, in pseudonymized or anonymized form ... for scientific studies, scientific articles and other research purposes as may be disclosed when your Personal Data is collected." As long as consent is clearly asked for in these instances, we're OK with this too.

Then there is the matter of what and how Natural Cycles says they share with law enforcement. This section of their privacy policy is a little more vague than we like to see. They state that can disclose your personal information, "if we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation." That doesn't give us much to go on regarding how Natural Cycles would handle subpoenas from law enforcement. We'd like to see a bit more information there. The good news is, when we asked Natural Cycles this question about sharing with law enforcement, they acknowledged it was a thorny issue and told us they are "currently in the process of creating a completely anonymous experience for users" with the goal of making it so no one, not even Natural Cycles, can identify the users. Yes, please! We'll all stay tuned for this.

What's the worst that could happen with Natural Cycles. Well, hopefully not too much, although they do collect a whole bunch of very personal information. One thing to consider: when you're able to use your Apple Watch or other wearable device to connect with this app to track information about your cycle, remember, you'll have to worry about the privacy of that device as well as this app too. The more you share, the more you have to worry about that data leaking out into the world somehow.