Phishing for Gynecology
by tristero
From The Guardian:
A popular women’s health and fertility app sows doubt about birth control, features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the US, and is funded and led by anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners, a Guardian investigation has found.
The Femm app, which collects personal information about sex and menstruation from users, has been downloaded more than 400,000 times since its launch in 2015, according to developers. It has users in the US, the EU, Africa and Latin America, its operating company claims.
Two of the app’s medical advisers are not licensed to practice in the US and are also closely tied to a Catholic university in Santiago, Chile, where access to abortion remains severely restricted.
Femm receives much of its income from private donors including the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a charity backed almost exclusively by Sean Fieler, a wealthy Catholic hedge-funder based in New York.
Fieler’s foundation has long supported organizations – and politicians such as the vice-president, Mike Pence – that oppose birth control and abortion. Fieler has criticized Republicans for failing to outlaw abortion, calling their reticence “the tyranny of moderation” in a recent editorial.
The Chiaroscuro Foundation, with Fieler as its chairman and main backer, provided $1.79m to the developers of the Femm app over the last three years, according to IRS statements. Fieler also sits on the board of directors for the Femm Foundation, a not-for-profit which operates the app.
The Femm app does not readily disclose the philosophy of its funders or leaders, and markets itself as a way to “avoid or achieve pregnancy”.
Other fertility apps have been criticized for monetizing intimate data, sharing data with third parties and lack of privacy protections. Femm has not been accused of such behaviour, but appears to be the first ideologically aligned fertility app.
The Femm app’s literature sows doubt about the safety and efficacy of hormonal birth control, asserting that it may be deleterious to a woman’s health and that a safer, “natural” way for women to avoid pregnancy is to learn their cycles.
The nausea this cynical tactic induces is mixed with serious alarm.
Femm merely got exposed. There surely are many, many more apps and online initiatives out there collecting information purely for ideological purposes. And it is only a matter of time before shaming, blackmail, extortion, or worse becomes a major problem. And not just about reproductive tactics, but about anything that thoroughly decent people would want to keep private and only share with trusted others.