About 10 years ago, a story about Target’s amazing ability to detect a client’s pregnancy made waves. An angry man walked into a Target store in Minneapolis, demanding to speak to a manager and gleaning coupons he had received in the mail for baby clothes and cribs for his teenage daughter. “Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” He asked. It turns out that her daughter was already pregnant and Lakshya had figured it out before she could.
Data mining has improved since then, but luckily we have the tools to protect privacy. A leaked draft ruling suggests the US Supreme Court may overturn the landmark 1974 ruling Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to an abortion. This will make online privacy more important than ever for women and health care providers, as privacy over abortion will become imperative not only for personal reasons but to avoid legal ramifications or vigilance. It is not clear who would be legally liable for abortion in a dozen or more US states that may prohibit it. But many women would like to carefully hide their online activity. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned Tuesday that “every digital record—from web searches to phone records and app data—will be weaponized in Republican states as a way of controlling women’s bodies.”
The first thing many women in need of an abortion do is to seek advice online. It won’t change. But if they live in one of the 22 states that would probably outlaw abortion, it would be wise for them to hide their browsing history and use an encrypted messaging app to talk to others about their plans. Should abortion pills also be outlawed, women may turn to the dark web to buy them – something they already do, according to a study. Women can also turn to VPNs to prevent mobile network providers and search engines from seeing their browsing habits. They’ll erase their web history, use an incognito window or use a more privacy-focused browser like Firefox.
Such tools, usually associated with political dissidents in autocratic regimes, may be far more important to American women in the post-Roe v. Wade world. One tech news site reported that a location-data firm is already selling information about visits to abortion clinics by tracking apps on groups of phones.
The Internet presents risks, but also helps, as do telemedicine services that provide abortion medicine. Many women in the US have resorted to services such as Ad Access to obtain such drugs; The Women on Web website provides services to women around the world. Depending on the location, pills can cost around $90, versus $600 or more to complete the procedure in the clinic, which is prohibitively expensive for many women who need an abortion.
Online groups like Facebook’s Auntie Networks will also become increasingly important. These are pages run by people who offer an extra room in US states where abortion is legal, for women who need the procedure. A 2019 report in the Washington Post described how some Auntie Network pages suggested taking selfies at local sites as “proof” that the trip was just a vacation. One host in Iowa said they would be “happy to mail you a birthday card” that includes birth control, a Plan B pill or a pregnancy test. Well-meaning as these initiatives are, this is sensitive information being hosted by a social media company that is already being used by third parties, in this case advertisers.
Meanwhile, an upcoming law in the European Union that reins in the power of big tech firms could have the unintended consequence of making people’s data in the US more vulnerable to surveillance. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which will come into force over the next few years, forces the world’s largest digital companies to adapt their products to those of competitors. This means that messaging apps like WhatsApp will need to coexist with less secure services like SMS. But some cryptography experts say making these devices interoperable would break their encryption standards, which could put women seeking abortions at greater risk.
Social-media and search platforms have been exploited by the surveillance advertising industry for years. How much will they oppose future government efforts to impose restrictions on abortion? What happens if state prosecutors order Facebook or Google to identify women who break the rules? Given the liberal ethos of many Silicon Valley billionaire founders and the legal repercussions of whistleblower Edward Snowden, it is difficult to see such firms cracking their encryption and given government demands to hand over such details. But put enough financial pressure on a business and anything can happen. For now, encryption and online privacy tools are a sacrosanct right for women seeking an abortion. They should not be turned into luxuries.
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology,