this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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You Should Know

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[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

Digital period tracking in an age where abortion is under attack is a recipe for some dystopian handmaid type shit. I'll continue to track on a paper calendar I can easily incinerate.

[–] Blibly@lemmy.world 52 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Here's what you should use: a calendar and a pen.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yup, exactly. Nothing digital is truly safe. You want to properly avoid having your data secretly subpoenaed? Use a fucking journal or planner, and just mark your period days with a different colored pen, or put a raindrop in the corner and say it was days you personally predicted it to rain. Turns out, your tarot cards are just really bad at predicting the weather.

You could be open about it, and use it to track symptoms, calculate days between cycles, etc… But the more detailed you make it, the more obvious it will be if someone else gets ahold of it.

[–] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Your car has electronics, you should use a horse instead.

[–] Blibly@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Way ahead of ya, I ride a bike (••) ( ••)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)

[–] captcha_incorrect@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

+1 for the glasses

I also ride a bike, but a bike can't beat a car when you buy a new bed.
I really want to see a bike that could.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because you're buying a new bed/dresser/large furniture everyday.

You should see my mansion, I need another one soon.

[–] Frozengyro@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

And make sure to lock it in a safe and burn it when you're done with it. Also don't share with your health Care provider without vetting them, and ensuring they aren't recording and disclosing your information. Or using AI. Good luck, essentially impossible to get good health Care for women, same as it ever was.

[–] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 day ago

If it's calendar, use https://codeberg.org/svewa/MedicalCalendarLog to log and get alerts on being late....

disclaimer: mine

[–] sp6@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago

PrivacyGuides has a section about this on their website: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/health-and-wellness/#menstrual-cycle-tracking

At the time of writing, it seems Drip is the best option on both iOS and Android. The app is free, open-source, and all data is completely local. Honorable mention to Euki as well

[–] lena 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Drip is also on Android, available both as an APK and on the Google Play store.

[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And on fdroid. It's fully offline AFAIK.

[–] whilefalse@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, completely on device. I happen to personally know one of the maintainers and got to discuss some of the code with her. Also completely open source, so if you don’t trust the packaged apps, you could even build it yourself from source

https://gitlab.com/bloodyhealth/drip

That is a legendary GitLab user name.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Withholding my upvote because your links are to Play Store instead of F-Droid.

[–] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Nothing, you should never use an app to track your period. Use a calendar there is no reason you should give that sort of info to anyone besides a doctor.

[–] ChexMax@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

The reason is to get a notification it's coming. The reason is because I'm so fried surviving, I don't have the mental energy to spend on calculating the due date and then changing it by a day due to trends I'd also have to track. I barely remember to log it in an app, there's no way I'm logging it on a calendar, and then keeping track of that paper for multiple months or years to track trends. bleeding through my pants at work is worse to me than the spyware. Being a woman is hard enough. Blame the Spyware, not the women.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Or understand the difference between software that mines data and software that just does what it says. If it advertises cloud features, then it's probably a data mining app. There's firewall apps that make any other app need permission to use the internet at all that you can use as a gatekeeper, but then you need to adopt the mindset of wondering why an app wants internet access instead of just clicking "allow" so that things work asap.

But yeah, pen and paper or even a spreadsheet not dedicated to tracking periods are good options if you want to avoid worrying about all that. Only thing I'll add is that it applies to a lot more than just period tracking apps and IMO is as useful these days as knowing how to do basic car or home maintenance.

[–] Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 2 points 1 day ago

P Tracker is the one used by my SO

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

iOS has a built in feature as well, which Apple claims is private.

[–] mlfh@lm.mlfh.org 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Private until apple gets a subpoena from a prosecutor in some medieval christo-fascist red state trying to turn a miscarriage into a murder charge.

I mean, Apple also provides E2EE cloud backups. Assuming it is properly encrypted without backdoors, Apple could only “comply” with a subpoena by turning over the encrypted data blob. The feddy bois would only get the digital equivalent of white noise unless they could decrypt it.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 days ago

Apple employs on-device storage. Don’t use iCloud backup. I don’t know how the listed apps work, but if there’s a cloud sync, the same thing applies to them - and they’re less able to fight it should they choose to.

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I suppose the nefarious use of that data would be targeted ads? Also, I track my wife’s cycles by observing the lunar cycle. Maybe some people are less regular or some people want more data logging but the moon is a pretty good indicator. Would recommend looking at it from time to time.

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The nefarious use of the data would be to track and convict women who "may" have had abortions dude.... Combined with telemetry data of when you may have had to travel to a blue state for a day or two and it's not a difficult pattern to spot

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So what I'm seeing is a chance for men to confuse the data by installing a period tracking app, tracking fake periods, then skipping a few months and resuming, which might make some asshole cops doing a particularly asshole investigation waste time and resources. A parricularly ambitious man could even set up multiple accounts to pretend to be a whole slew of briefly pregnant women.

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

A really enterprising individual may even VPN into Texas to pretend to be the aforementioned slew of briefly pregnant women.... Get the most value out of you efforts, ya know?

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Has this ever happened and led to a conviction? Seems far-fetched to me but I am privileged in many ways. I’m sorry that this is even a possibility in some places.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

The flo app apparently shared data with Facebook. Besides that, there already have been multiple cases where police used Flock cameras for abortion investigations, so this really isn't that far fetched.

[–] wuffah@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Vood ewe lihkke sauhm oft mein Menstruuudel?