3d ago

Meta illegally collected data from Flo period and pregnancy app, jury finds

Archive: https://archive.ph/2025.08.05-225314/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/jury-finds-meta-broke-wiretap-law-by-collecting-data-from-period-tracker-app/

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This is not about just the data, they were found guilty of fucking eavesdropping. I can't wait to see people defending this as not being true for advertising. Please bookmark this article everyone. That headline is crap.
Plaintiffs in a class-action case proved by a preponderance of evidence that Meta intentionally eavesdropped on and/or recorded conversations using an electronic device, said a verdict form released yesterday in US District Court for the Northern District of California. Plaintiffs also proved that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy and that Meta did not have consent from all parties to eavesdrop on and/or record the conversations, the jury found.
- I feel this comment lacks some nuance. Someone who didn't read the article might think microphones were involved, or that Meta recorded any conversations, which they didn't.
  What has actually happened: The Flo app, as part of onboarding, asks the user about their goal for using the app, with possible choices being "I am pregnant" and similar sensitive info. They are using Meta's analytics SDK for tracking what users do in the app, and they included an event for when a user selects the goal. All these events go to their analytics dashboard, which lives on Meta's servers. Flo promised they are not sharing this information with third parties, but they clearly do. So in the end, information about someone being pregnant ended up on Meta's servers. Meta later learned that this data is sent their way, and incorporanted it for their own use for advertising.
  Both Flo and Meta are clearly guilty here. But no eavesdropping occured here, "just" the usual event tracking of which radio button a user selected when installing the app. I.e. no conversation was recorded by anyone, which is what someone may picture seeing the word "eavesdropping". Which doesn't make this any better of course.
  What I'm trying to get to is this:
  they were found guilty of fucking eavesdropping. I can’t wait to see people defending this as not being true for advertising.
  This story is once again an example showing that your devices don't need to listen to your conversations, and aren't eavesdropping on you. Because all the apps you use are already tracking everything you do, no eavesdropping necessary. Which I think is the opposite to the point you were trying to make.
  
  The deck does not say where CMG allegedly sources this voice data, be that a particular brand of smart TV, a smart speaker, or smartphone loaded with a particular app. It says that once it has used the voice data to identify an audience that is “ready-to-buy,” CMG builds a list of those audience members and uploads it to ad platforms to then target advertisements. It says for $100 a day, CMG can target people in a 10-mile radius, or $200 a day for a 20-mile radius.
  https://archive.is/ckFB2
  You might be partially right, but I can't find what is meant by the "recorded conversations" part. I guess I gotta look further in.
  "Each of the Defendants had their own purpose for collecting and using Flo user data," the brief said. "Flo used this information to acquire new app users through advertising and marketing, including advertisements based on Flo App users' reproductive goals (e.g., getting pregnant). Flo also sold access to the CAEs sent through SDKs to other third parties for profit. Google and Meta separately used the data they intercepted for their own commercial purposes, including to feed their machine learning algorithms that power each of their respective advertising networks."
- intentionally eavesdropped on and/or recorded conversations using an electronic device
  don't be silly. i know that's IMPOSISBLE because i read a headline from a big-tech-sponsored publication which said they can't do that (even though the article - which i didn't actually read - says they can)
- I'd bookmark it if it did something. it's not visible at all for seo to the outside world.
  
  We've got a lot of really smart people here, some are journalists. These people go around telling other people and now have links to sources. Why do you think the trolls come here?
  It's good to have this as a back up when the techbro trolls try to say they don't really listen for ads or data farming. This happened just a few weeks ago, but I couldn't find a link.
- There are much more effective ways of surveillance...
  
  Such as?
$10000 ICE will use this data to charge POC women crossing state borders to access reproductive care with murder and deport them.
- No, I think the ones persecuting women for murder for seeking an abortion would be a different agency. ICE will be the ones using this data as a way to target pregnant brown women for deportation.
  The US has a wide variety of jackbooted thugs these days; ICE is just the largest.
  
  Brown women for now
  ICE’s new annual budget places the federal agency among the top 20 most well-funded militaries in the world
  Through the president’s signature domestic policy, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE’s annual budget is expected to increase from $8.7 billion to approximately $27.7 billion, with $75 billion allocated for the agency over the next four years.
  It’s not going to end with brown women, or brown people, or criminals, or whatever else was promised. No other reason to create such a well funded private military with direct presidential control and far less rules about how they can be used in comparison to the actual military
  
  Eh, ICE is in the proto Schutzstaffel phase. For now they only abuse and kidnap people who fit the ever expanding category of "foreigners", but we're only one dementia decision away from Trump deciding that it's only his most dedicated bootlickers can be trusted.
I guess they also did this outside of the US?

18 comments