A survey of mental health and prayer apps reveals a disturbing lack of concerns surrounding user security and privacy.
On Monday, Mozilla released new findings on these types of apps. These apps often deal with sensitive topics such as depression, mental health awareness, anxiety, domestic violence, and PTSD, along with religious themed services.
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According to Mozilla’s latest * Privacy is not included Despite the sheer amount of personal information these apps manage, the guide says, “I share data on a daily basis, allow weak passwords, target vulnerable users with personalized ads, and be ambiguous. It features a poorly written privacy policy. ”
In a survey of 32 applications targeting mental health and religion, the organization found that 25 of them did not meet Mozilla’s minimum security standards.
These criteria Serves as a benchmark * For PrivacyNotIncluded reports. Misleading or unauthorized sharing and selling of user data, ambiguous data management policies, lack of encryption, weak password policies, lack of explicit vulnerability management systems, and other loose security policies are all Mozilla’s perspectives. May downgrade vendor products from.
If your app or service does not meet these basic requirements, it will be labeled with the “* Privacy not included” warning label.
Mental health and prayer-related apps have been praised, but not what you crave. The company says:
“When it comes to protecting people’s privacy and security, mental health and prayer apps are inferior to any other product category that Mozilla researchers have reviewed over the last six years.”
The organization investigated apps such as Talkspace, Better Help, Calm, Glorify, 7 Cups, Wysa, Headspace, and BetterStop Suicide. As a result, each app has its own space for access to learn more about software privacy and security ratings.
for example, Stop suicideThe suicide prevention app failed Mozilla testing.
“Holy vague and messy privacy policy Batman! BetterStop Suicide’s privacy policy is bad,” says Mozilla. “Similarly, get a bad grade from a high school English teacher.”
The app collects some personal information and says it can contact users with further questions, but it doesn’t respond to Mozilla’s contact attempts and who is the “trusted partner” when sharing data. Does not mention.
Only the two applications on the list, PTSD Coach and the AI chatbot Wysa, seemed to take data management and user privacy seriously.
“Most of the mental health and prayer apps are very creepy,” commented Jen Caltrider, Mozilla’s * PrivacyNotIncluded lead. “They track, share, and leverage the user’s most intimate personal thoughts and emotions, such as mood, mental state, and biometric data. A survey of mental health apps found that they weren’t suitable for mental health. These companies have access to our most intimate personal information. ”
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