After Vice managed to buy the location data of people who visited 600 Planned Parenthood clinics (for a mere $160!), California AG Rob Bonta is urging Apple to better protect users’ private information in App Store third-party apps.
Once word leaked in May that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade, several states were instituting cash bounty laws which offered money for turning someone in if they received or in any way abetted an abortion. So Vice did a little journalistic experiment on how easy it was to acquire this data via third-party apps. And it was very easy; Vice acquired the location data for people who visited 600 Planned Parenthood clinics over a week, and got all this data for a mere $160.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is one of 11 state AGs who are now urging Apple to clamp down and better protect this data. NBC Bay Area reports that those attorneys general have sent Apple a letter asking them to protect users’ reproductive health data, including “search histories, location, and sensitive health data.”
“California leads the nation when it comes to digital privacy and reproductive freedom. We’re calling on tech companies like Apple, who call our state home, to lead by example as well,” Bonta said in a press release. “With reproductive rights under attack across the nation, our fight to protect reproductive freedom has never been more crucial. We urge Apple to heed our call and protect their users from attempts to regulate their bodies and curtail their freedom by improving consumer protections for third-party apps in the App Store.”
The letter that the AGs sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook is also online. “When it comes to app data related to reproductive health, however, Apple has not done enough,” the letter says. “Location history, search history, and adjacent health data (specifically, all information relating to the past, present, or future reproductive or sexual health of an individual) pose a significant risk to individuals seeking or providing abortions, birth control, or other reproductive health care.”
The letter asks Apple to make three corrective changes: A) deleting search, location, and all “data not essential for the use of the application,” B) give users notice when an app might collect data “related to reproductive health care,” and C) force third parties to encrypt health data via the same standards Apple does.
Yes, 11 state AGs signed the letter, but the letter merely says “We urge Apple to honor its commitment to protecting consumer privacy.” People, “urge” is one of the most useless words in politics. There are no penalties proposed here, nor is there any enforcement mechanism. Apple is completely free to blow this off. But Apple does like having a reputation for user privacy, regardless of whether it’s accurate, so there may be some symbolic or even meaningful gestures as a result of these attorneys general speaking up.
Related: Facebook and Instagram are Deleting Posts About Abortion Pills, Sometimes ‘Within Seconds’
Image: jamesyarema via Unsplash
