Clue vows to safeguard users following the 2024 election amid concerns anti-abortion state laws could allow phone searches for menstrual data.
The team behind menstrual health and period tracking app Clue has said it will not disclose users' data to American authorities, following Donald Trump's reelection.
The message comes in response to concerns that during Trump's second presidency, abortion bans that followed the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 will worsen and states will attempt to increase menstrual surveillance in order to further restrict access to terminations.
The main service my period tracker provides is a notification telling me "hey, it's PMS time. If you're emo it's ok, it's probably just hormones and not the real end of the world. You're also likely to hyperfixate on something. Pull out your knitting a fixate on that, instead of risking fixating on something someone said off-handedly a decade ago that now makes you cry".
(The message is user-configurable. Mine doesn't say that verbatum, but that's the gist.)
I laid awake last night thinking if it would be possible to make an elaborate Excel spreadsheet to accomplish this. I need to research more about the specifics of menstrual cycles, but I think it wouldn't take that much effort. It could be disguised as something else and shared freely, and people could store it locally to ensure privacy.