The parent company of fertility tracking app Premom has agreed on a $200,000 settlement, but does not admit to any wrongdoing.
Easy Healthcare, the parent company of fertility tracking app Premom, shared private health information without gaining the consent of its users, the Federal Trade Commission said.
The FTC said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday the company collected sensitive information about sexual and reproductive health, social media information and user geolocation. The information was then shared with two China-based companies known for “suspect privacy practices,” the D.C. Attorney General’s office said in a statement.
This comes amid heightened scrutiny over the tracking and data sharing of fertility and ovulation apps following the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which previously guaranteed the right to safe abortion across the country.
“Now more than ever, with reproductive rights under attack across the country, it is essential that the privacy of healthcare decisions is vigorously protected,” Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in the statement.
The Premom app allegedly gained hundreds of thousands of users and their mobile phone information while “repeatedly and falsely” promising users that they would not share health information without consent, and the data was only collected for its own analytics or advertising, the suit stated.
Users “were entitled to have their locations and devices kept confidential, but Easy Healthcare shared that private information with third parties without notice or consent, putting users at risk,” Schwalb said, according to the statement.
In response, Premom has agreed to a $200,000 settlement – $100,000 of which is a civil penalty for violating the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR), and $100,000 of which will be paid to Connecticut, D.C. and Oregon for violations of their state laws.
Premom, however, does not admit to any wrongdoing. “It is a settlement to avoid the time and expense of litigation and enables us to put this matter behind us and focus on you, our users," the company wrote in a statement on the Premom website. "Rest assured that we do not, and will not, ever sell any information about users' health to third parties, nor do we share it for advertising purposes."
Premom did not respond to Inside Edition Digital's request for comment.
