Tracking Periods Without Being Tracked

The group behind the nonprofit app Drip says it offers greater privacy than commercial rivals

- By Naomi Kresge

When Marie Kochsiek started work on an open source app for tracking menstrual cycles four years ago, some people questioned why the world needed another such program given that dozens were already on the market. But the Berlin software developer saw that most had a common flaw: They used private information for targeted ads, so a user who skipped a period might suddenly get a pitch for diapers, strollers, or baby food. While that argument resonated among the privacy-minded, the not-forprofit app—called Drip—barely got any traction against commercial rivals such as Flo, Ovia, and Glow, all of which have millions of users.

The conversation changed this year when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, paving the way for states to criminalize abortion. Particularly in the US, women started to worry about whether the wealth of data they were entrusting to the apps could provide evidence that they’d been—and perhaps no longer were— pregnant. “Sadly, people had a new dimension in the threat,” Kochsiek says.