Your best friend may not know when you last had sex, but it’s possible that Facebook does.
At least two menstruation-tracking apps, Maya and MIA Fem, were sharing intimate details of users’ sexual health with Facebook and other entities, according to a new report from Britain-based privacy watchdog Privacy International.
In some cases, those details, which are self-recorded by users in the app, included when a user last had sex, the type of contraception used, her mood and whether she was ovulating.
The findings raise questions about the security of our most private information in an age where employers, insurers and advertisers can use data to discriminate or target certain categories of people.
The information was shared with the social media giant via the Facebook Software Development Kit, a product that allows developers to create apps for specific operating systems, track analytics and monetize their apps through Facebook’s advertising network.
Privacy International found that Maya and MIA began sharing data with Facebook as soon as a user installed the app on her phone and opened it, even before a privacy policy was signed.
Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said advertisers did not have access to the sensitive health information shared by these apps. In a statement, he said Facebook’s ad system “does not leverage information gleaned from people’s activity across other apps or websites” when advertisers choose target users by interest. BuzzFeed first reported the news.
h/t GR