Why Fia has no analytics, and our other apps ask first
A week before Fia went on the App Store, it had analytics: the same setup our other apps use, off until you turn it on, anonymized, and sent to PostHog in the EU. We took it out. Fia 1.0 shipped on October 14 with none, and its App Store privacy label says Data Not Collected.
What "ask first" means in our other apps
In Pressbook and Graycard, analytics is a switch in Settings, and it starts off. Turn it on and the app sends anonymized events about which features get used, with an anonymous install ID, to PostHog in the EU. Photos, file and folder names, and client names are never in them. Both apps declare this on the App Store as Data Not Linked to You, and you can turn it off at any time.
For a photo app, we think that's a fair trade, and it's yours to make. For a period tracker, we decided the answer had to be no.
Why Fia is different
The label can't say "not collected" if the app collects. Apple is explicit that "data collected on an ongoing basis after an initial request for permission must be disclosed." There is a narrow exception for product improvement programs, but only when the data isn't linked to the person "via their account, device, or other details." Analytics events carry the phone's model, system version, language and time zone, tied together by an install ID. For a period tracker, we didn't want to argue where that line falls. (Apple's rules)
An event's name can be health data. In our own pre-launch build, the moment Fia asked for a rating was logged along with what led to it: a check-in that went better, or a finished session. Each one is a small fact about someone's body. Over months, together, they describe a person.
The law treats health data differently now. In April 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission finalized changes that make clear its Health Breach Notification Rule covers health apps that HIPAA doesn't, and that a breach includes "an unauthorized disclosure," not only a hack. Washington's My Health My Data Act covers health data inferred from other data. It requires consent to collect that data and separate consent to share it, unless that's necessary for something the person asked for, and it lets people sue. Tracking a period never requires analytics.
It has already gone wrong elsewhere. In 2021, the FTC said Flo Health had shared users' health data with marketing and analytics companies, including Facebook and Google, after promising to keep it private. In 2023, it charged the maker of Premom, a fertility app, with sharing health data with third parties, including AppsFlyer and Google, without telling its users.
What it cost us
We have no funnel. We can't see where people stop during setup, which screens nobody opens, or whether a change helped. We learn more slowly, from reviews and email, and some of our guesses will stay wrong longer than they would in an app with analytics.
We think that's the right cost for this app. A period tracker that knows less about the people using it is a safer one.
How we measure Fia without it
| What we want to know | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| How many people find Fia and download it | App Store Connect: impressions, product page views and downloads |
| Whether people keep using it | App Store Connect: sessions and retention, from people who share app analytics with developers in iOS Settings |
| Whether people buy Fia Plus, and keep it | App Store Connect and StoreKit: sales, renewals and refunds |
| Whether it crashes | Xcode Organizer: crash reports from people who share analytics with developers |
| What's wrong or missing | App Store reviews, and email to fia@sideswipelabs.com |
The usage and crash numbers come only from people who opted in through iOS, and Apple shows them to us in aggregate. Nothing in that table comes from code inside Fia.
Why Pressbook and Graycard still ask
Their analytics never includes your photos or the names of your files, it starts off, and it helps us see which tools people actually use. Their App Store labels declare it, and you can turn it off in Settings at any time. How to check what an app does with your data works on all three of our apps.
