With the stories about data from period tracking apps being shared with law enforcement, I was wondering if there was a self hosted alternative I could host for my daughter. My searches so far have not returned any good results. Thanks!
Sorry, I'm just a dude with no periods that buries my head in the sand a bit to much. The government is doing fucking WHAT with your period information? How is this any of their business? Why would they want to know this information?
That is fucking insane, considering there are a million reasons why someone might not have a period (stress, could just be an irregular person, or literally no reason at all. Humans are not all the same). Or they could simply forget to input data into their calendar one time. Or they could simply decide that they don't want to use the app any more, then change their mind a few months later. This data would be circumstantial evidence at best, and if anyone is being convicted of a crime based on this data, I am extremely suspicious of the court system in that country/state.
And that's BEFORE we even talk about how it's a huge invasion of privacy.
Got it, thanks. I tend to not pay attention to the news, so sometimes I peek out of the rock I live under and am surprised at how much the world has gone to shit. The scenario described by OP is unfortunately plausible.
Drip looks great! I've been using Ovuview which says it keeps your data private, but being proprietary I can't easily know for sure. I love Ovuview for its depth of tracking (Symptothermal plus any custom symptoms you want) and it's accurate predictions.
But will be really nice if Drip works out well (gonna try it for a while first before ditching Ovuview) so I can finally use something FOSS.
Use the one built into iPhones and either encrypt iCloud so Apple cannot read it ( but no way to recover if you forget password) or turn off iCloud sync for health data (you will lose history with new phone).
Or, print out a one page annual calendar and use a pencil.
Just so you see it, on android at least I can recommend drip which is open source and also keeps your data local. It's available on fdroid: https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.drip/
While that is actually nice and does focus on privacy, I'm not sure if "funded by [...] government" is a good argument in favor in the context of this post...
Look into Periodical as well, it's on fdroid and completely local. It also shows when the next period should be and works better than some closed source apps.
As someone who uses Nextcloud, why do you suggest obfuscating the name of the calendar event? My nextcloud instance is only accessible from outside my LAN via HTTPS, so no concern about someone using a packet sniffer on public WiFi or something of that sort. The server is located on my property, so physical security isn't a real concern unless someone breaks in with a USB drive or physically removes the server from the rack and steals it. If someone was to gain access to my network remotely, they'd still need login credentials for Nextcloud or for Proxmox in order to clone the VM drive.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you; I'm wondering if I may be over-estimating data security on my home network. Considering you're posting from infosec.pub, I'm assuming you know more about this than I do.
Also, I feel like I need to say that the fact that OP even needs to consider data security for something like really makes me wonder how parts of our society have gone so wrong.
If your concern for wanting to self host is that you're concerned your government might attempt to access that data, then you should also assume they could get a warrant for that data and force you to decrypt it if it were encrypted at rest on a machine in your home.
The police can confiscate your servers. Considering some states are treating abortion as murder, I don't think it's unrealistic to say the police could raid your home and confiscate your devices just on suspicion.
The only thing safe against that is an encrypted device locked with a password, no biometrics like fingerprints or face ID. As far as I know, you can refuse to give a password under the 5th amendment, but you can't refuse to unlock a device with a fingerprint reader or face ID.
Drip is one of the better options if you want to just download something from your app store of choice. It’s FOSS, requires minimal permissions, and seems to store all data locally.
I've heard log28 is a good simple app with a local database and without tracking. I haven't looked at it too closely to verify much. But seems like it hasn't had an update for a while.
Besides ease of use and the practicality of having it at hand at all times, these apps show you important stats like longest time between periods, average time between periods, current time since last period. Same with length of period. All useful stats for you, your doctor, and potentially your partner if you’re trying for a baby.