FTC: Popular Fertility Tracking App Premom Shared Sensitive Health Info with Google, Chinese Companies

A popular fertility tracking app, Premom, is facing allegations of unlawfully sharing sensitive health data of its users with third-party advertisers including Google and Chinese companies, according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

TechCrunch reports that according to a FTC complaint, Premom, a well-known fertility tracking app, allegedly shared sensitive health information about its users with third-party advertisers.

Users of Premom, created by Easy Healthcare, can monitor their periods, ovulation, and other health data. The FTC’s investigation, however, showed that the business had been sharing personally identifiable health and location data without users’ permission with Google and the marketing company AppsFlyer since 2018.

According to the complaint, “hundreds of thousands” of users’ personal information, including information about their sexual and reproductive health, parental status, pregnancy status, and other physical health conditions, were exposed. Other advertisers were able to follow users across different apps and the internet thanks to the app’s additional disclosure of users’ location information along with distinctive advertising and device identifiers.

Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, commented: “Premom broke its promises and compromised consumers’ privacy. We will vigorously enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to defend consumer’s health data from exploitation. Companies collecting this information should be aware that the FTC will not tolerate health privacy abuses.”

The investigation also showed that Easy Healthcare shared users’ private information between 2018 and 2020 with Jiguang and Umeng, two Chinese mobile analytics firms. The information included precise geolocation information and IMEI numbers, which are specific to each individual device. William Tong, Connecticut’s attorney general, raised issues with these analytics companies’ privacy policies.

Easy Healthcare has agreed to pay $100,000 in penalties as part of a proposed settlement filed by the Department of Justice for breaking the FTC’s health breach notification rule. The states of Connecticut, Oregon, and the District of Columbia, who helped with the investigation, will also receive a combined $100,000 from the company. Additionally, even though compliance is not legally enforceable, Easy Healthcare has been instructed to stop sharing personal health information with third parties for marketing purposes and to ask for the deletion of the information.

Premom responded to the accusations by claiming that the agreement with the FTC “is not an admission of any wrongdoing” on its website.

The FTC has now pursued legal action against a company twice for failing to comply with the Health Breach Notification Rule. The organization settled with online pharmacy GoodRx in February of this year after it failed to disclose that it shared personally identifiable health information with Facebook, Google, and other third parties.