Fertility health apps: Who sees your data?

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Silicon Valley wants to get women pregnant.

From period apps that predict a woman’s most fertile days to startups that claim to fast-track in vitro fertilization (IVF), reproductive tech is booming, and investors are digging deeper into their coffers to make sure everyone who wants a biological child can have one.

Somehow, women’s fertility apps have found a profitable niche in the predominantly-male tech scene, surging past all other mobile health apps in terms of funding revenue in 2014.

But while the tech industry has invested millions to ensure that future-mothers deliver happy and healthy babies, it also hopes they’ll deliver a lot of valuable private information.

As more women turn to data-driven fertility products, will they be forced to choose between taking control of their health and ceding control of how their personal information is used?

Mobile health services have been storing and sharing your data with third parties for quite some time now, and often outside the bounds of strict regulatory guidelines that hospitals are compelled to follow. A 2013 study conducted for the Financial Times found that 20 of the most popular health apps shared data with approximately 70 analytics companies and advertisers who, in turn, used this information to target ads and build user profiles.

Read full, original post: Why Does Silicon Valley Want to Get So Many Women Pregnant?

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