Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, concerns about digital tracking have grown as consumers abandon their usual femtech apps in search of better privacy. Prosecutors can weaponize health app data, alongside other digital trails of data, in cases related to abortion.

In Nebraska, in a case involving a teenager allegedly mishandling fetal remains, additional abortion charges were brought after the Dobbs ruling when police obtained the girl’s Facebook messages. According to one estimate, police and prosecutors have used at least 50,000 extractions of digital data from 2015 and 2019 for various crimes.

Following the Supreme Court decision, some femtech companies have made an effort to amp up their security. But recent studies, such as those from Mozilla and Consumer Reports, reveal that not all claims about privacy hold true. Despite the popular consensus that personal health information should be protected, U.S. law does little to guarantee this. Until regulations catch up to the latest push for greater privacy, experts say, companies may continue to exploit health data for profit.

At the same time, some are innovating toward a better end. Data encryption company Virtru debuted a prototype of an encrypted period tracking app at the annual hacker convention DEF CON in August, where reproductive health was a topic of focus. The prototype, SecureCycle, was built on OpenTDF, an open-source Virtru project giving software developers a framework for building E2E encrypted apps. Its...

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