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The FTC comes down on yet another digital health company for third-party sharing of sensitive information

By
Andrea Guzman
Andrea Guzman
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By
Andrea Guzman
Andrea Guzman
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May 18, 2023, 2:46 PM ET
Roslan RAHMAN / AFP

Hi, it’s Fortune’s tech fellow Andrea Guzman filling in for David. 

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An app known as Premom pitches itself as an “all-in-one personalized ovulation calculator and period tracker” that offers monthly cycle reports and overviews of pregnancy timelines. It promises users “you don’t have to navigate your ovulation tracking journey alone.” 

And its hundreds of thousands of users really aren’t alone since, according to Federal Trade Commission charges and a settlement announced on Wednesday, the app allegedly shared their sensitive, personal information with third parties. The FTC says Prenom also disclosed users’ private health data to AppsFlyer and Google and failed to notify consumers of the unauthorized disclosures. 

“Premom broke its promises and compromised consumers’ privacy,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Levine went on to alert companies that the FTC “will not tolerate health privacy abuses.”

It’s the latest in a series of crackdowns on digital health companies. Earlier this year, the FTC proposed a ban on the GoodRx app sharing users’ health data for advertising. That was followed by BetterHelp’s March settlement with the FTC for allegedly sharing information about users’ mental health concerns with outside companies like Facebook and Snapchat. 

The Washington Post reports that both GoodRx and BetterHelp had said that the practices they’d carried out were common for the industry.

The responses reveal the cavalier attitude some companies have around their users’ highly sensitive health information. In Premom’s case, the data it shared with third parties dealt with information around users’ sexual and reproductive health, parental and pregnancy status, and other information about physical health conditions. 

The importance of safeguarding personal health data is gaining attention amid increasing restrictions on reproductive rights, including a court challenge on an abortion pill known as mifepristone, North Carolina’s law to ban abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, and South Carolina’s push for a proposal to ban the procedure after six weeks. Digital data, including information from Facebook and Google as well as from online pharmacies, has been used to build cases against those seeking or providing abortions.

Easy Healthcare, the company behind the Premom app, denied wrongdoing. In a release, the company said the settlement went through so it could “avoid the time and expense of litigation,” and went on to boast about its new line of supplements and the upcoming launch of a prenatal multivitamin.

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

Andrea Guzman


On privacy. In this Sunday’s edition of The Trust Factor newsletter, Fortune’s Eamon Barrett will discuss how, in the post-GDPR era, companies and brands can navigate data privacy concerns while leveraging first-party consumer data to provide better services to customers. Subscribe to The Trust Factor to get it delivered to your inbox.

NEWSWORTHY

How to get a pay raise at Microsoft. Chief marketing officer at Microsoft Christopher Capossela told employees angry about the lack of salary raises that the best way to increase their pay is to make the stock go higher. “The most important lever for almost all our employees’ compensation upside is the stock price,” Capossela wrote in a chat with employees last week that was viewed by Fortune. This comes after Microsoft told employees that the company will not provide raises to full-time salaried employees due to economic conditions and after Capossela cashed out $4.4 million worth of stock.

Amazon’s investment in cloud infrastructure in India. Amazon Web Services plans to invest $12.7 billion into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 to meet growing customer demand for cloud services. The investment will bring 131,700 jobs for roles including engineering, telecommunications, and construction, and adds to Amazon’s spending in India as it currently maintains two data center regions. It’s also an increase to a previous November pledge to invest more than $4 billion in the market, and one that the country is celebrating. Rajeev Chandrashekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology in India welcomed the investment and said it will “catalyze India’s digital economy.”

Montana's TikTok ban. Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill Wednesday that makes it illegal for TikTok to operate in the state. It will take effect in January 2024 and would be void if the platform is sold to a company that is not based in “any country designated as a foreign adversary” by the federal government. But cybersecurity experts have raised skepticism over whether a ban is even possible. The state is also anticipating legal battles as Montana’s attorney general said he expects the law will end up in court.

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

“The venture business, if you want to be at the top, requires insane, remarkable hustle…You have to live in fear that the next Google is going to get funded by a firm that’s not yours."

—Longtime VC investor Bill Gurley in an interview with Fortune about what he’s been up to since stepping back from Benchmark, where he backed companies like Uber, Grubhub, Zillow, and more

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BEFORE YOU GO

The first CRISPR-edited snack. Pairwise is launching its own mustard greens that it says will be less bitter than the plant. Scientists at the company used the DNA-editing tool CRISPR to take out a gene that’s responsible for a peppery flavor when the food is raw. It’ll be available later this month and eventually, CRISPR-made seedless blackberries and pitless cherries could be on shelves, too. The new offering is coming to some restaurants in Minneapolis, Minn., St. Louis, Mo., and Springfield, Mass., with plans to hit grocery stores this summer. Wired talked to Tom Adams, cofounder and CEO of Pairwise about the new green, which he described as "a new category of salad."

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