Fertility app Premom to pay $200K after sharing delicate person knowledge

The developer behind the fertility and ovulation-tracking app Premom shared delicate person well being knowledge with third events, the Federal Commerce Fee mentioned on Wednesday, asserting a $200,000 settlement.

“Premom broke its guarantees and compromised customers’ privateness,” mentioned Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Shopper Safety, in a statement. “Corporations accumulating this data needs to be conscious that the FTC won’t tolerate well being privateness abuses.”

The FTC accused Premom’s developer, Straightforward Healthcare, of deceiving customers by sharing their private data with two China-based companies and different third events — and sharing delicate well being knowledge with AppsFlyer and Google. The FTC additionally says Straightforward Healthcare didn’t notify customers of the unauthorized disclosures as required underneath the Health Breach Notification Rule.

The info Easycare shared with third events “revealed extremely delicate and personal particulars about Premom’s customers and led to the unauthorized disclosure of info about a person person’s sexual and reproductive well being, parental and being pregnant standing, in addition to different details about bodily well being circumstances and standing,” the FTC mentioned.

In response to the complaintPremom didn’t adequately encrypt person knowledge and didn’t restrict how third events used the info.

FTC on Wednesday introduced a proposed order that may have Straightforward Healthcare pay a $100,000 civil penalty for violating the Well being Breach Notification Rule and one other $100,000 to Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Oregon, for violating these areas’ legal guidelines. The settlement nonetheless wants a decide’s sign-off, as of the FTC’s newest launch on the subject.

The developer would even be “completely prohibited from sharing person private well being knowledge with third events for promoting” and “required to hunt deletion of information it shared with third events” amongst a number of different restrictions and necessities.

“We lately reached a settlement with the FTC.  Our settlement with the FTC is just not an admission of any wrongdoing. Fairly, it’s a settlement to keep away from the time and expense of litigation and permits us to place this matter behind us and give attention to you, our customers,” reads a statement on the Premom website.

“Relaxation assured that we don’t, and won’t, ever promote any details about customers’ well being to 3rd events, nor can we share it for promoting functions.”

The Supreme Court docket’s determination final 12 months to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked new concern about user data privacy on period-tracking apps and the way the data could be used to determine ladies searching for abortions.