When Yeeun Jo, a student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) contacted me in 2025 to ask about data tracking in app advertisements related to women's health and pregnancy I was a bit skeptical.
Given the FTC’s subsequent 2021 crack-down specifically targeting Flo Health for passing intimate logging metrics to Facebook and Google. I thought it was unlikely they'd find much.
Well, it's a year later and I was wrong.
Jo & Reaves found mobile apps and mobile ad networks were still tracking health data.
Their paper shows the high specificity which these events are tracked ...
Rest of my blog post & AppGoblin links (to see which apps using which ad networks currently) to the apps in paper:
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 15.1 ms ] threadGiven the FTC’s subsequent 2021 crack-down specifically targeting Flo Health for passing intimate logging metrics to Facebook and Google. I thought it was unlikely they'd find much.
Well, it's a year later and I was wrong.
Jo & Reaves found mobile apps and mobile ad networks were still tracking health data.
Their paper shows the high specificity which these events are tracked ...
Rest of my blog post & AppGoblin links (to see which apps using which ad networks currently) to the apps in paper:
https://jamesoclaire.com/2026/06/30/the-pregnancy-and-health...