Privacy by design
The symptom diary app with ZERO health data collection
6th June 2024
We are all used to having our data collected and sold to people we don’t know. From the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal to the wide-ranging vacuum-cleaner privacy policies (which hoover up basically every bit of information they can possibly get about you) of Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and even health apps.
The reason is that these apps (which are often “free“) make money via a revenue model called surveillance capitalism. In this model, the app is not the product the company makes - the app is just a way to funnel your personal data into databases which they can sell to data brokers. In effect, you become the product - the real customer of the app is the data broker, and the people who buy your data from the data brokers. This model will naturally pressure the app designers to collect as much data as possible about you, your identity, your location, your health.
A further problem with data collection is that, as we seen regularly in the news, if your personal data is collected in a central database, it is almost impossible to prevent it from being stolen by hackers.
I designed Chronic Insights to be different. I wanted to give us the choice of using a symptom diary which is truly private and truly secure. The only way to guarantee this is to not collect personal data.
That’s why the Chronic Insights mobile app only collects anonymous crash data, which is used to diagnose and fix bugs and errors in the app. No health data, no email addresses, no login details, no IP addresses, no GPS - just the privacy that we deserve.
It’s also why I designed a backup system into the app which allows you to store a copy of your data in your own private Dropbox account - so you are in charge of your data, not me.
I only make money via subscriptions from users who choose to upgrade to the premium version of the app. That means the only incentive I have is to make the best symptom diary app I can. I don’t have outside investors, so I have no pressure to change this model, and I never will. Privacy, and the trust you place in me when you install my app and input your private health data is too important to me.