HealthDataDetective
An on-phone auditor that scans your installed health and wellness apps and tells you, in plain language, which ones are sending your data to advertising networks, analytics firms, and data brokers.
privacy-conscious consumers who use period, fertility, mental-health, or general wellness apps and want to know which ones leak
- App scan that lists every health app on the phone and its known data-sharing partners, sourced from public audits like Mozilla's
- 'How exposed are you?' summary score plus a recommended action per app (keep, tighten settings, delete)
- Plain-language explanation of what each tracking SDK actually does with the data it gets
- Settings walkthroughs for each major app explaining how to disable tracking, with screenshots
Most users have no way to know that Stardust sends pregnancy status to RudderStack or that Period Calendar shares device IDs with InMobi; the BBC story is the latest in a recurring stream of revelations
Recurring mainstream coverage (BBC, Mozilla investigations, HN front-page discussions) and dedicated Mozilla *Privacy Not Included category pages for mental-health apps confirm a sustained, vocal audience concerned about health-app data leakage.The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker ↗Mental Health Apps | Privacy & Security Guide | Mozilla Foundation ↗
Crowded field: Exodus Privacy (Android tracker scanner), Mozilla *Privacy Not Included (curated reviews), Apple's Privacy Nutrition Labels, and enterprise tools like Privado AI all address overlapping ground; an on-phone, automatic consumer-facing health-app-specific scanner is a real but narrow gap.εxodus Android application ↗Mobile App Privacy — Privado AI ↗
Leading incumbents (Exodus, Mozilla *Privacy Not Included) are free, and ad-supported monetization is awkward for an anti-tracking product; willingness-to-pay among general consumers for privacy scanning beyond VPNs is unproven and price-sensitive.*Privacy Not Included | Shop smart and safe | Mozilla Foundation ↗εxodus reports ↗
Post-Dobbs legal exposure, GDPR/state privacy laws, and a steady cadence of investigations (BBC, Mozilla, IMDEA Networks) create durable regulatory and cultural tailwinds likely to outlast any single news cycle.The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker ↗
Android side is tractable via APK/SDK inspection (Exodus proves the pattern), but on-phone automatic scanning of installed iOS apps is constrained by App Sandbox — apps cannot enumerate SDKs of other apps without root/jailbreak, VPN/local-DNS MITM, or relying on App Store privacy label scraping, all of which are brittle and limited.GitHub - Exodus-Privacy/exodus: Platform to audit trackers ↗