HQ Team
June 23, 2025: Private corporations stand to profit from smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles as they provide a ‘gold mine’ for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication to sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use, according to a report.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy said, “the financial worth of this data is vastly underestimated’ by users who supply profit-driven companies with highly intimate details in a market lacking in regulation.”
The data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects, workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and cyberstalking, and limit access to abortion, they said.
The three most popular apps had an estimated 250 million downloads in 2024. The so-called femtech industry – digital products focused on women’s health and wellbeing – is estimated to reach revenue of over $60 billion (£45 billion) by 2027, with menstural cycle tracking apps making up half of this market. The industry refers to female technology products, software, and services that enable the use of digital health to manage women’s health issues.
Menstrual tracking applications turn personal health information into data points to be collected, analysed, and sold, according to the report.
Selling data to third parties
In the UK, police forces may be able to check tracking apps and medical records related to reproductive health, while in the US, following the reversal of Roe v Wade, the second Trump administration is actively defunding life-saving reproductive and sexual health care.
Data on pregnancy is believed to be over 200 times more valuable than data on age, gender or location for targeted advertising. The report states that period tracking could also be used to target women at various stages in their cycle. For example, the oestrogen or ‘mating’ phase could see an increase in cosmetics adverts.
“Menstrual cycle tracking apps are presented as empowering women and addressing the gender health gap,” said Dr Stefanie Felsberger, lead author of the ‘The High Stakes of Tracking Menstruation’ report from Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre.
“Yet the business model behind their services rests on commercial use, selling user data and insights to third parties for profit.”
“There are real and frightening privacy and safety risks to women as a result of the commodification of the data collected by cycle tracking app companies. Menstrual tracking data is being used to control people’s reproductive lives,” said Felsberger. “It should not be left in the hands of private companies.”
Privacy violations
As most menstrual cycle tracking apps are targeted at women aiming to get pregnant, the download data alone is of huge commercial value, the researchers said. Other than buying a home, no life event is linked to such dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour.
In the UK and EU, period tracking data is considered ‘special category’, as with that on genetics or ethnicity, and has more legal safeguards. However, the report highlights how in the UK, apps designed for women’s health have been used to charge women for illegally accessing abortion services.
In the US, data about menstrual cycles has been collected by officials in an attempt to undermine abortion access. Despite this, data from cycle tracking apps (CTA) is regulated simply as ‘general wellness’ and granted no special protections.
“The UK is ideally positioned to solve the question of access to menstrual data for researchers, as well as privacy and data commodification concerns, by developing an NHS app to track menstrual cycles,” said Felsberger, who points out that Planned Parenthood in the US already has its app, but the UK lacks an equivalent.
“Apps that are situated within public healthcare systems, and not driven primarily by profit, will mitigate privacy violations, provide much-needed data on reproductive health, and give people more agency over how their menstrual data is used.”
Use at ‘all-time’ high
The researchers called for better governance of the booming ‘femtech’ industry to protect users when their data is sold at scale, arguing that apps must provide clear consent options rather than all-or-nothing data collection, and urge public health bodies to launch alternatives to commercial CTAs.
“The use of cycle tracking apps is at an all-time high,” said Prof Gina Neff, Executive Director of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre. “Women deserve better than to have their menstrual tracking data treated as consumer data, but there is a different possible future.”
“Researchers could use this data to help answer questions about women’s health. Care providers could use this data for important information about their patients’ health. Women could get meaningful insights that they are searching for,” Neff said.
Investigations by media, non-profit, and consumer groups have revealed CTAs sharing data with third parties ranging from advertisers and data brokers to tech giants such as Facebook and Google.
Despite data protection improvements, the report suggests that user information is still shared with third parties such as cloud-based delivery networks that move the data around, and outside developers contracted to handle app functionalities.
“Menstrual tracking in the US should be classed as medical data,” said Felsberger. “In the UK and EU, where this data is already afforded special category status, more focus needs to be placed on enforcing existing regulation.”
