There are over a thousand such apps, and the largest have tens of millions of active users per month. The Consumer Council says you should use menstrual apps with caution. – Companies can target advertising at you when you are at your most vulnerable. That type of data can reveal quite a lot about you, such as your physical form and your mental health. This can make you more vulnerable to commercial messages and messages, says Finn Myrstad, specialist director at the Consumer Council. Information such as menstruation, intercourse or how emotional you are during your cycle is information you can provide to a pregnancy and menstruation app. The information is often used to provide useful information about yourself, but can also be used to direct advertising to you. – Now we see that this type of information is being spread everywhere, says Myrstad. Sensitive health information is subject to strict rules. That makes it basically illegal to collect and process such data. Then with some exceptions such as express consent. – If you wish to download or use menstruation or pregnancy apps, we strongly recommend that you thoroughly read the terms of use beforehand, says Siri Aasness, senior legal adviser at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority. Siri Aasness, senior legal adviser at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority Photo: Ilja C. Hendel Impossible terms of use Reading through terms of use can be very challenging, says Myrstad in the Consumer Council. – All experience says that they are far too long, and they are anyway complicated to understand. Even if you read the terms of use, and it says that the app does not share data with a third party, this need not be true, says Myrstad in the Consumer Council. Finn Myrstad, professional director at the Consumer Council, warns against sharing sensitive information with apps. Photo: The Consumer Council – In any case, you have no way of knowing that what they write there is true, and our experience is that what is written there can be outright wrong if you test the app technically afterwards. As a consumer, you are a checkmate in the face of these apps and these impossible terms of use. Professor of computer security at the University of Oslo, Audun Jøseng agrees: – Of course you can read up, but that will take a lot of time. Even if one does, most people will not realize or see the perspective of what they accepted. The pregnancy and menstruation app Flo has over 56 million users a month and over 300 million downloads. The Mozilla website is one of several that have assessed the data security of Flo, and other similar apps. They say Flo cannot guarantee privacy. In 2021, the app was accused of sharing sensitive health information from users with advertising and marketing companies. In an email to news, Flo says that they have never sold user data, and that they still take data security seriously. Operates on its own The Norwegian Data Protection Authority is responsible for breaches of the personal data legislation in Norway. They do this on several occasions, but by far they check all apps that are put into use. Jøsang says that even if apps claim they take data security seriously, they rarely do. Audun Jøsang, professor of Data Security at the University of Oslo, says that each consumer is largely alone against the big players. Photo: Ine Eriksen / UiO – There is rarely any supervision or audit of how they do this. So here they can almost operate on their own. Each user stands largely alone against the big players, says Jøsang. – Big Tech has enormous power, and they manage to avoid regulation as best they can in order to create more profit for themselves. That is precisely what they exist for. So here it is a huge challenge for the government to keep “Big Tech” in check. Looking at a ban Gunn Karin Gjul (Ap), state secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization says that those who offer services must ensure that information is processed in accordance with the rules. Gunn Karin Gjul is state secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization as Photo: Vetle Hjortland / news – Service providers are also responsible for providing good and comprehensible information about how they process personal data. What are they doing to secure the data against sale/processing of sensitive information? – The government is working on a digitization strategy where privacy will be central. Among other things, a separate national privacy strategy must be drawn up. Gjul also says the government is working out what consequences a possible Norwegian ban on marketing based on the mass collection of, among other things, personal information will have. – At the same time, the government is concerned that the users themselves should, to the greatest extent possible, be able to choose how their information is used. This applies particularly in a commercial context.
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– As a consumer, one is checkmate – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
