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| - Ovia has three apps available for download on smartphones: a fertility and period tracker, a pregnancy and baby tracker and an infant care tracker. All three require users to input their country and state before accessing the app’s services.
In mid-2024, social media users began spreading a claim that Ovia, an app used to track reproductive health, requires users to provide their country and state of residence before accessing the app's tracking services.
The claim found its way onto platforms like Facebook, X and Reddit. Some of the posts specify a certain Ovia app — there are three different apps under the Ovia brand — like this September Reddit post with 14,000 upvotes, which refers to Ovia's ovulation tracking app:
My ovulation tracker suddenly asked what state I live in
byu/BabserellaWT inWitchesVsPatriarchy
Whereas this August post refers to Ovia's pregnancy tracking app:
Ovia app required my country/state
byu/Infinite_abyss inBabyBumps
Other posts don't specify which Ovia app requires users to provide their location, like this X post from December:
(X user @NineInchClawz)
The claims made in these posts are true. Snopes downloaded all three Ovia apps — one for fertility, ovulation and menstruation, one for pregnancy and one for infant care — and could not get past the basic information page to access the rest of the app without filling out the "country of residence" and "state of residence" queries. The state of residence query appears as a required field if the user chooses the United States as the country of residence.
Snopes reached out to Ovia and we will update this story if we hear back.
Here's a screenshot from Ovia's fertility and menstruation tracker showing that country of residence and state of residence are required fields in order to proceed further:
Screenshot of an Ovia app. (Ovia: Fertility, Cycle, Health)
Ovia Health — which produces the three Ovia apps — makes it clear in its privacy policy that the company collects geolocation data from users, which includes "approximate location by country, state, city, zipcode and regional area."
Ovia's apps also tell users that it collects state and country information to ensure it follows your locality's privacy laws and to "further protect your data," referencing the fact that many states are introducing or considering new privacy laws to protect people's personal data. But many users expressed concern that the app would provide its geolocation data if subpoenaed in court, potentially providing evidence to help convict people who miscarry or seek an abortion in states that outlawed abortion after the fall of federal abortion rights under Roe v. Wade.
One Facebook post from Dec. 12 warning others about Ovia said, "I do indeed think it's worth considering the risk to women these days to track fertility by state."
That's a real concern shared by privacy experts and reported by reputable news outlets, including NPR. As of July, there haven't been any cases where a menstrual tracking app's data has been subpoenaed, according to reporting from Stateline, a publication focused on nationwide trends in state legislatures. But "that's probably due to the slow speed of which cases proceed through the court system," the report noted.
As of Dec. 12, we found no news outlets reporting on any menstrual tracking app data being subpoenaed — and if it happened, it would likely be newsworthy. Jake Laperruque, deputy director of The Center For Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, said the organization is "unaware of any publicly reported instances to date in which period tracker data has been subpoenaed." However, Laperruque noted it's possible there are instances that haven't received public attention or that can't be disclosed publicly because of a nondisclosure order.
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