HEALTH APP PRIVACY:

WHY YOUR DATA SHOULD STAY ON YOUR DEVICE

You shouldn’t have to trade your privacy to understand your health.

Most apps collect your data and ask you to trust them. TALIA doesn’t.

When you track your hormone health, you are recording some of the most personal information about your life — symptoms, medication, mood, hormonal changes, intimate health.  Under UK data protection law, information about your symptoms, cycles, mood and medication is classed as sensitive health data. In many menopause and health apps, you can’t use the service unless you agree to that data being collected and processed. This is known as explicit consent — and most women don’t realise that this is the trade-off for apps that offer free functionality.

Unfortunately, investigations over the past few years have shown that many health apps have not always protected that information as carefully as users might expect.

Regulators and researchers have discovered cases where health apps shared sensitive user data with advertising and analytics companies. In some instances, information about menstrual cycles, pregnancy intentions or mental-health questionnaires was transmitted to third-party platforms without users fully realising it.

At the same time, large cloud databases containing personal health information have become increasingly attractive targets for cyber attacks.

All of this raises an important question: how should personal health data really be protected?

Privacy isn’t just a policy — it’s architecture

Many apps promise privacy. But if personal health data is stored in central cloud databases, it still has to be protected, secured, encrypted and managed. And history has shown that even well-intentioned systems can fail.

At TALIA we took a different approach.

Rather than building a system that collects health data and then tries to protect it, we designed TALIA so that your data never leaves your device in the first place.

Put simply: the architecture is the privacy policy.

How TALIA protects your data

Everything you record in TALIA — symptoms, medications, notes and reports — is stored locally on your phone.

That means:

• there are no TALIA servers storing your health data
• there is no central database of users
• there is no advertising tracking
• there is no third-party data sharing

Because the data never leaves your device, we cannot see it and we cannot access it.

No accounts. No data collection.

TALIA does not require you to create an account. We do not collect or store your health records. Your menopause journey remains private and personal, exactly as it should be.

Your backup, under your control

TALIA includes the option to enable or disable iCloud sync, so your records are automatically backed up and protected under your own Apple account — without ever passing through our hands.

When we might receive information

The only time we may receive information from you is if you choose to contact us — for example by sending a support email. In those cases we will only receive the information you choose to share, such as your email address and message.

The full legal detail

If you would like to see the complete legal details about how we handle any information you may choose to send us, you can read our privacy policy below.

Read the full Privacy Policy →

Further reading

For readers interested in the broader discussion around privacy and health apps:

• US Federal Trade Commission — Flo Health settlement regarding sharing health data with third-party platforms
• Norwegian Consumer Council — Out of Control: How Consumers Are Exploited by the Online Advertising Industry
• The bogus privacy in FemTech – Manna Mostaghim explores how FemTech apps often give the illusion of privacy while quietly exploiting sensitive health data.
• What is explicit consent? ICO explanation.
• FTC action against BetterHelp regarding sharing sensitive health questionnaire data with advertising platforms
• UK Information Commissioner’s Office — guidance on protecting health data
• Top Tips to keep women safe using FemTech apps – Dr Maryam Mehrnezhad has researched this area for years and provides advice for end users.