Data Privacy Week 2025
If you didn’t know already, now you do – it’s Data Privacy Week (January 27 to 31)! The brainchild of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, it aims to arm you with everything you need to spot and avoid the biggest risks to your data privacy and “Take control of your data”.
It’s here at last – 2025 – and while January has felt as though it’s gone on for months, already, plenty of us use the start of a new year to launch a physical fitness journey.
If you’re prioritizing your health, it makes sense to invest in some help, and fitness apps have become handy go-tos. With one app, you can track the entire span of your progress – exercise routines, weight loss, heart rates, sleep patterns, and much more. However, this is super-sensitive data, and some fitness apps don’t handle it with the care that they should.
So, with that in mind, I’ll run through how you can use these fitness apps without giving away sensitive information – and boost your online security in time for Data Privacy Week.
The privacy risks of using fitness apps
Okay, you’ve got your workout gear, bought all the right equipment, and have carved out time in your week to go work up a sweat – a fitness app just seems like a necessary part of the puzzle, right?
They certainly can serve an important purpose. All of your statistics will be housed in a single place, after all, making it a lot easier to see how you’ve been doing and where you can improve your current routine. However, as I mentioned earlier, this opens you (and your data) up to certain risks – especially if you’re entrusting these details to Tech Giants who already have a, uh, less-than-stellar reputation when it comes to protecting consumer data.
The first thing to remember is that the data collected by these apps isn’t protected under the law like health information usually is. If you agree to let your app track it, you’re also (potentially) agreeing to make it available to other third parties.
Beware breaches
Unfortunately, data stored in fitness apps can also be susceptible to data breaches – and they’re bad news. Check out our guide to data breaches to learn more.
Any fitness app that permits third-party access to your medical and fitness information should be seriously side-eyed, of course. Surfshark recently compiled a report detailing how 12 of 15 of today’s best fitness apps gladly fork over your personal data to third parties (and that Strava and Fitbit lead the pack).
These third parties typically collect the data and combine it with the data of other users in, what you can only hope, is an anonymized cluster. As for why, well, the usual reason is for the sake of improving the app’s performance.
The anonymization process isn’t always perfect – vulnerabilities and mistakes happen. Unfortunately, when they do, it’s a gift to bad actors looking to pinpoint a specific individual for their own nefarious ends. Think harassment, phishing scams, and even stalking.
Then, there are the data brokers. Some fitness apps agree to fork over your stats to these brokers who, in turn, can sell that data on to the highest bidder. It’s good business for them – and especially true of free fitness apps. How else do you expect them to turn a profit?
Fitness apps aren’t unique in being data-hungry, of course, as all apps collect a certain amount of detail about you. However, it’s much easier to switch up passwords and usernames (to shore up your security) than it is to change identifiable records like your resting heart rate, weight, or blood type. This information is intrinsically tied to you, and it’s the kind of thing you don’t want to end up for sale on the dark web.
How to reclaim your data privacy when using fitness apps
If you’re wondering whether all of this means that you need to give up your favorite app and go totally analog – don’t worry, that’s not the case. There are a few simple things you can do to balance your health journey with good digital privacy:
- Embrace digital minimalism: remember the old adage of “stranger danger”? It still rings true in 2025. Be wary of what personal details you share with your app and ask if it really, truly, needs it to do its job. I’d recommend using a variation of your real name, not revealing your location, and refraining from uploading any photos. Save those for your friends!
- Opt for the strongest security settings: this one’s important – and not just for your fitness apps. Head into your app permissions to see what your tracker has access to, and prune any that you find superfluous. Then, in the app’s settings, make sure you select the toughest, strongest privacy options – keep your profile as private as possible and opt out of any third-party sharing.
- Don’t put yourself on the map: okay, while this may seem counterintuitive (especially if you’re an avid jogger), hear me out. Location data is a hot commodity that bad actors can use to cause all sorts of havoc – or by advertising companies looking to serve up tailored ads. If you must share your location, only do so when you’re a fair distance from your home, and turn it off before you head back.
- Go premium: free apps are always tempting, especially if you’re working with a budget. However, free services usually make you the product – and profit from your personal data. Premium services typically have the resources to employ stronger security measures and invest in effective customer service teams that can troubleshoot any concerns. Essentially, it’s money well spent.
- Pick a solid password: I find myself giving this advice all the time, but it’s important! A weak password might be easy to remember, but you’re also making it a lot easier for a hacker to breach your account with a brute force attack or credential stuffing campaign. So, use unique passwords for all of your apps, make sure they include some symbols and numbers, and check out one of today’s best password managers if you need a helping hand remembering them.
- Don’t put off those updates: we’ve all done it – we open up an app and see it has a pending update, and decide that we’ll deal with that later. These updates serve an important purpose, however, and sometimes even contain patches to resolve known security issues. If you’re trusting your fitness app with your physical details, well, you’ll want to make sure they’re well-guarded.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/AF7y7Yukdv4ecoXsvZrByJ-1200-80.png
Source link
river.hart@futurenet.com (River Hart)
