Mobile health apps, or mHealth as they are popularly known, are a growing industry. Health-conscious individuals prefer the convenience of reliable apps to monitor their fitness schedules, dietary habits, and health conditions. Data breaches, unauthorised access, and exploitation of personal health information are a cause for concern though. When someone gains access to your data without authorisation, this violates your privacy and exposes you to other, more severe risks, such as identity theft.
Mobile Health Privacy and Security Concerns
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle stems from incorporating fresh, organic whole foods and regular exercise. Using a health app helps you to monitor your progress and stay fit. However, you need to safeguard yourself from hackers and online predators when allowing apps permission to collect data.
Our research into mHealth apps arrived at the following conclusions regarding privacy and security concerns:
1. Poor Data Collection
Some mHealth apps use your personal details for reasons unrelated to the app and without your consent. This is referred to as poor data collection. For example, an exercise tracking app that requests access to personal data, like contacts or location, without a valid reason is a red flag.
Lack of transparency in privacy policies is another area of poor data collection. Researchers found that several apps need reliable privacy policies; only 30% have them.
Poor data collection on mHealth apps compromises your privacy because data is collected that you either do not want collecting or which you have not been asked permission for. This not only can lead to mistrust of the app, but the misuse of your data or the sale of it to third parties.
2. Disclosure of Information
After surveying the most popular health apps, researchers found that approximately 50% of mHealth apps send data to third-party advertisers for marketing purposes. Sometimes, advertisers even use data such as dietary habits, exercise routines, or health conditions without the app users’ consent.
3. Data Encryption
Data encryption is a necessity for all mobile health apps. This is because an app is open to hackers or unauthorised users without excellent and up-to-date encryption measures.
4. Device Vulnerability
Despite many mobile users taking extra precautions to safeguard their data online, it is still possible for your smart device to become lost or stolen. Therefore, you should back up your data and add security measures such as two-factor authentications.
5. Data Breach
Data breaches of mHealth apps occur when hackers access your medical records, treatment history, or other health-related data via the app’s servers or databases. This is something that is sadly quite a regular occurance.
To limit your risk of such breaches you should create strong passwords and unique usernames that are different for every app or online service you use. This will limit any all out of this branch to just that for you and protect all your other online accounts.
Security Measures in Mobile Health Apps
mHealth apps are vulnerable to hackers through APIs (application programming interfaces). Insecure APIs can expose your data to breaches or misuse. Developers are taking this issue of vulnerable APIs seriously and adding additional security measures to protect their mHealth apps.
Safeguarding User Privacy
Health apps are susceptible to data breaches, privacy issues, and poor data collection. Stay safer by choosing trustworthy apps, updating apps regularly, using strong passwords, and using data encryption where possible.