Tracking tech threats to abortion privacy.

From American public media this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Jamele. This week we've been taking stock of how tech has both helped and harmed Americans trying to get abortions in the two years

since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the Doves decision

some experts warned consumers that menstrual tracking apps would offer a means of surveilling abortion

seekers. There was even a social media campaign on what was then known as Twitter,

advising people to delete their period trackers.

But as it's turned out, the threat to privacy isn't limited to those apps.

Other digital data can actually be more likely to reveal an illegal abortion. That's according to Albert Fox

Khan. He's the founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and he

says sensitive data used for abortion surveillance can come from everyday consumer apps.

There are any number of other apps on our phone, general purpose tracking apps, location data,

ad tech data that has been far more innately intertwined

with abortion policing.

And while I think that we've seen a really show

show customers that their data will be safe

when they're using period tracking apps and other health

apps. There's so many other sources of data that we know are being used to police abortions

and to put people in jail.

And people might remember that right after Dobbs there were some period tracking apps that made a big show of how they were going to protect users privacy.

Those saw a lot of downloads after the decision came down.

Yeah, this was a clear win-win where a lot of these apps could get a leg up in the market by putting

user privacy first where they could make sure that information was being saved only to a

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