Researchers at Mozilla found that mental health apps have worse privacy protections than most other app categories. The report claims that the apps can track, share, and capitalize on user's personal thoughts and feelings. Jen Caltrider, Lead, *Privacy Not Included, Mozilla, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.


Opening Bell

Mozilla: Mental Health Apps Shown to Have Poor Privacy Protections

for more on this gen, cult writer lead at privacy not included, Mozilla joining us now, jen, thanks so much for being here. We just talked about your report. It found that dozens of mental health and prayer apps collect large amounts of personal data under these vague privacy policies. Can you break down what sort of data these apps are collecting right now and how big of a deal this is? Yeah, I mean mental health apps, there's a mental health crisis. So it's great that you know, there's apps out there to help people manage that right now because a lot of people don't have access to therapists or things like that. But the problem is is these apps collect a huge amount of personal information, you know, whatever you give them whatever you tell them. So, um you know, like for example, if you want to use the the online therapy at better help, um you go and you start off on an intake questionnaire and it'll ask questions about you personally, you know, um you know, are you feeling depressed? Are you having anxiety? Um their their pride counseling will ask about your gender identity or sexual orientation and this is all information that you share with them willingly um before you even have, you know, a chance usually to read their privacy policy. So you know, you know, when you're sharing when you're using an app to look at recipes or learn to drum, you know, you're giving up a little of your personal information, but when you're using an online mental health app, you tend to give up a lot more information and and that's kind of where the concerns come for us is the privacy policies for the drumming app and the mental health app look very similar and you know they're sharing data with third parties, uh they're gathering data for third party sources to add more information on you and it just gets to be really concerned. You mentioned sharing data with third parties. Is there anything in this report that also points to the fact that maybe these apps are using the data to fuel their business policies? Because I I mean we talked about this as we mentioned on the show and a lot of these apps while they may offer you know free tiers or reforms of the business model, a lot of them are paid. Do you think of something like a better help you have to pay for those therapeutic services? Um is there any evidence that you're getting at least from this report that could infer that maybe this data is being used to keep customers within these programs? Yeah, I mean some of the um the privacy policies that we read while we were doing our research on these mental health apps actually said, you know, these the your personal information that you give us is considered a business asset and and so they state right out that your information is going to be used as a business asset to you know sell ads to make them more money or to find ways to personalize content to keep you on the app even longer. And, you know, one of the concerning things is is there's a lot of vagueness in these privacy policies, A lot of them don't stay clearly that they don't sell your data. Um which leaves it open. Well, are they selling your data? Are they not? It's a concern. And so, you know, not knowing that in in a space where you're giving up so much, you know, intimate, you know, personal information just raises a lot of red flags for us. Yeah. Based on your experience at Mozilla, is it fair to say that those who are the most skeptical among us, who kind of consider it if the app is free? We're the product. Is that the way that you think customers and consumers generally should be approaching these apps? Just thinking, okay, if I'm not paying for any sort of model within this program, um it's likely that my information is being sold to at least a third party, if not within the business plan that is paid. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And and this is our data economy right now, like we live in this data economy, this ad economy where it's it's typical for apps um to say, you know, we're going to collect your data, we're going to use it to target you with ads. We're gonna share it with third party ad services, we're going to um use it to personalize. We we've got these ai algorithms that are going to find out that if you're you know you're studying for an exam and you did a meditation about passing the exam and you're more likely to stay on the app and do this next thing. And we're going to target you with that and personalize it to you. And you know it just gets really scary when people you know that are at their most vulnerable. You know that these apps range from depression, suicide, domestic violence, eating disorders all the way up to suicide prevention and people are at their most vulnerable. So when they start using the apps they probably aren't thinking is my privacy safe while I'm using these apps and and so they go into this. You know not really worrying about that And and at some point you know that's that's okay. You know if your mental health you need to get that right to privacy shouldn't be a top concern. What we think that Mozilla is. Companies should do better. You know it the sad economy that we live in it gets a little craven when you start targeting people based on their emotions and their vulnerabilities. Um And that's that's what we would like to see changed is let's do better cos let's treat people at their most vulnerable with more respect until we see that sort of transparency coming from these different companies. What can people do right now in order to opt out of data sharing and making sure that this isn't sold to third party companies or even within these apps. Yeah, there are a few things you can do. Um One thing I tell everybody who ever asked me how to protect my privacy is if you're signing up to an app, never sign up using your social media accounts like facebook um that allows them to collect even more data that you probably don't want out there. Um If you can, you know, read the privacy policy, I read privacy policies for a living. It's not super exciting. It's actually really frustrating because privacy policies are written by lawyers for lawyers for the most part um and everything is vague but take a look and and looking for words like just do a search for words like sell um and and share and and who who your data is going to, if you can opt out look for those options to opt out of as much data collection as you can and then just be very wary of what you provide these apps. Um You know, don't give up your most personal information if you can if you're talking talking with an online therapist. Um Ask that online therapist to take their notes by hand and not upload them into the app as a way to protect yourself. Um Just giving up as little information as you can to get the service is a good thing to try and do jen, I love all of that advice. It's all good information. Last question for you, do you anticipate there to be more legislation around privacy and data? Especially as you mentioned, this is the current information economy. Do you expect that to change anytime soon? Yeah, one hopes right. Like, you know, europe has the GDP are the stricter privacy laws, California has the CCP A which protects California residents, other states are starting to pass some similar laws. There is legislation at the, at the national level that would be great to be passed, but you know, relying on our, our current congress, um, knowing that, you know, there's tech, big tech has their lobbyists there, you know, we're hopeful, but it's not gonna happen anytime soon. And in the meantime, I think companies are pushing it off on consumers to protect themselves. Are policy makers are pushing us off on consumers to protect themselves and that's not how it should be. Unfortunately, that's how it is. I don't know that it's going to change soon, so I just hope that consumers can just be aware. All right, jen, cult writer lead privacy not included at Mozilla, Thanks so much for joining us