This is an excerpt from AI + Emerging Tech Ethics weekly dated May 6th. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.
It’s a dark time in America for human rights and privacy as Republicans try to stop patients from leaving the state for an abortion and some are using “Planned Parenthood patients’ last menstrual periods, purportedly to track whether they had complications.” Data brokers won’t let any crisis go to waste as some are selling location data of people who visit abortion clinics, slowing down only in response to public outrage.
In case you’re wondering what your period tracker app knows about you, Consumer Reports’ Digital Lab found, “in a recent examination of five popular period tracking apps—BabyCenter, Clue, Flo, My Calendar, and Ovia— even anonymous users have no guarantee that their information won’t be shared in some way with third parties for marketing and other purposes.” Speaking of which, Grindr, the gay-dating app’s user locations were collected and sold since at least 2017 through ad networks.