Are those smartphone health apps spying on you?
They’re supposed to make managing your health as easy as a few taps and finger swipes.
I’m talking about those smartphone apps that can track everything from your blood sugar to when to take your pills.
But it looks like these apps we use to record our most private health information aren’t keeping it so private after all.
In fact, the apps on your phone right now could be selling to the highest bidder everything from your medication history to which illnesses you have.
And believe it or not, there’s nothing to stop them.
That’s what Deborah Peel, the head of a group called Patient Privacy Rights, calls most every one of those health and fitness apps that are so popular these days.
And the health data these apps are collecting on you is “the most valuable information in the digital age, bar none,” she said.
Diabetes apps, for example, are a storehouse of every single piece of information about your blood sugar levels, medications taken, food, and what exercises you’re doing. Some even connect with your doctor and allow his office to see everything that’s going on as you enter it.
The only trouble is, keeping track of your health this way is almost as if you wrote it down on a big billboard in Times Square. Because all that information can be sold to drug companies, health insurers and anyone else willing to pay up — and that’s without breaking one single law (more on that in a second)!
In fact, even the apps that aren’t already selling your data seem to be going out of their way to keep that option open.
A study just published in JAMA found that over 20 percent of the diabetes health apps researchers looked at didn’t have any privacy policies whatsoever. They’re actually avoiding privacy language like the plague so they can use your health information any way they want.
And you don’t even have to deliberately download many of these health apps, either. Some new smartphones come with them built right in.
A friend who recently got a new phone didn’t even know there was one of these on it until the phone started beeping with a message that she had reached her “fitness goal.” Then it asked to take her heart rate (on the phone) and wanted her to start entering in personal information.
Then there are the “tracking” apps, ones that can follow your movements better than a kennel full of bloodhounds. Take one called “Moves,” for example. Recently purchased by Facebook, this app is a sophisticated spy on your own phone that knows — and records — your every move.
Things such as how far you’ve walked, biked or ran, where you stopped, or how long you stayed without moving at all. And you can bet life insurers, for example, would pay a pretty penny to get their hands on that before they set your premiums.
And if you’re wondering where those patient privacy laws are in all this, well, they basically don’t exist. The authors of the new JAMA study said that “there are no federal legal protections” covering selling or disclosing your most private health information from medical apps to a third party.
You can also forget about HIPAA, that law that’s supposed to make all your health information hush-hush. It doesn’t even apply here because we’re the ones “creating” all that data, not a doctor or hospital.
A data expert warned that once this information is out in the world, just about anyone might get hold of it, including employers, Big Pharma or even your insurance company.
So before you start filling up that neat new app with your most personal information, remember this — it may not stay personal for very long.
Sources:
“Health apps often lack privacy policies and share our data” Reuters, March 9, 2016, Fox News, foxnews.com
