Security News > 2022 > May > Mozilla: Lack of Security Protections in Mental-Health Apps Is ‘Creepy’

While they have good intentions to foster mental health and spiritual wellness, the majority of mental-health and prayer apps can harm their users in other ways by exposing personal and intimate data due to a severe lack of security and privacy protections, researchers from Mozilla have found.

Mozilla's Jen Caltrider, the lead researcher for the report, went so far as to call the majority of mental health and prayer apps "Exceptionally creepy" in a blog post about the study.

"Turns out, researching mental health apps is not good for your mental health, as it reveals how negligent and craven these companies can be with our most intimate personal information."

Overall, Mozilla researchers spent 255 hours, or about eight hours per product, peering under the hood of the security of a variety of mental health and prayer apps.

Three others-Youper, a digital mental health service for treating anxiety and depression; Pray.com, which encourages a daily prayer practice; and Woebot, an AI chat bot to foster better mental health-go even further by sharing personal information from the apps with third parties.

Talkspaces even goes so far as to ask for users' written permission to use their health info and therapy notes for marketing purposes, which Mozilla researchers said is "Bad form" for any app, especially one dedicated to mental health.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/mozilla-security-health-apps-creepy/179463/