TPRC 2024: The 52nd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Inter

Link to paper

Abstract:
Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the Summer of 2022 in the United States, rising concerns have emerged towards privacy, data protection, and digital trust concerning reproductive health data. Such health data has become both a commodity in the commercial world and source of discovery in legal proceedings that attempt to incriminate women for seeking abortions. Digital footprints created via location data, private conversations on platforms, and internet search history lead to a constant state of surveillance that threatens privacy and freedom of movement for women throughout the United States. We conducted an online survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to identify the largest user concerns towards privacy of health tracking and period tracking applications. A large number of users were concerned with the privacy of their reproductive information and were found to have deleted period tracking applications due to these concerns. Additionally, we sought to identify what actions would lead users to feel more comfortable using these applications, identifying the largest being the localized storage of this data on their device. These findings suggest that users may be more likely to use these applications if their privacy concerns are addressed.