Does Flo sell your data?

No one has shown that Flo sold your data, and its privacy policy says it never will. What it did was share it. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, the Flo app sent details about users’ periods and pregnancies to Facebook, Google and other analytics and marketing companies from 2016 until February 2019. All the while, it was telling users their health data would stay private. That led to an FTC order in 2021, a class action, $59.5 million in settlements, and a 2025 jury verdict against Meta. The claim deadline for that settlement is October 15, 2026.

Here’s what happened, in order, with the source for each step. Then there’s our honest answer on whether Flo is safe to use now.

Does Flo sell your data, or share it?

The difference matters, though less than you might hope. Selling means handing data over for money. Nothing in the FTC’s papers or the court case says Flo did that. Sharing means sending data to another company, often for free, because its code is built into your app. That’s what the FTC complaint describes.

Free apps commonly use software kits from Facebook, Google and others to measure ads and usage. Each time you do something in the app, the kit can send a small event to its owner. Flo named some of those events after what you’d logged. One example in the complaint fires when a user enters her week of pregnancy. So the event itself told the receiving company something about your body. The complaint says Facebook used that event data for its own purposes, including research and development.

For you, the outcome looks about the same either way. A company you never chose ended up with health details you typed into a period app.

What did Flo share, and with whom?

The FTC lists five outside companies and the dates each one received app events.

It stopped after the Wall Street Journal reported on February 22, 2019, that it could see the Flo app telling Facebook when a user was on her period or wanted to get pregnant. The complaint says more than 300 users then wrote to Flo to complain. At the time, Flo’s privacy policy said it would share some data with partners like AppsFlyer and Flurry, but never data related to health.

What did the FTC order Flo to do?

The FTC announced the settlement on January 13, 2021, and made the order final on June 22, 2021. Under it, Flo had to do five things.

• Tell affected users that their health data had been disclosed.
• Ask the companies that got the data to destroy it.
• Get users’ consent before sharing their health information.
• Have an independent review of its privacy practices.
• Stop misrepresenting how it collects, uses and shares data, and how much control users have over it.

Is Flo being sued? The class action and the 2025 trial

Yes. Users filed a class action in 2021. It’s Frasco v. Flo Health, No. 3:21-cv-00757, in the federal court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The defendants were Flo and the three companies whose code was in the app, Meta (then Facebook), Google and Flurry. The users said those companies recorded their in-app health information without consent.

The case went to trial on July 21, 2025. Before the court ruled, Flo, Google and Flurry agreed to settle. All three deny the allegations, according to the official settlement site. Meta didn’t settle. On August 1, 2025, the jury found Meta liable under the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a wiretapping law, for collecting health data the Flo app sent it. Meta told TechCrunch it strongly disagreed and said it never eavesdropped on Flo users.

What Meta owes isn’t settled yet. The court docket shows the users asked Judge James Donato to enter judgment against Meta on September 14, 2026. That motion is set for a hearing on October 29, 2026.

How much is the Flo settlement, and can I claim?

The three settlements add up to $59.5 million. That money pays valid claims. It also covers the costs of running the settlement and the lawyers’ fees the court approves.

People who used Flo while living in California get a bigger share. The deadline to opt out passed on July 20, 2025. Any money from the Meta verdict is separate, and the site says eligible people will be contacted about it later. Filing for this settlement doesn’t change that.

We can’t tell you whether you qualify. If you used Flo in those years, read the notice and file only through periodtrackerdataprivacylitigation.com. Copycat sites turn up around every big settlement, and a real claim form never asks for a fee.

Was it a Flo data breach?

Not the kind most people mean. No one broke into Flo’s servers and stole a database. The data left because the app was built to send it. That’s arguably worse, since a breach is an accident and this was a product decision. It also means a strong password wouldn’t have protected anyone.

What does Flo say about selling data today?

Flo’s privacy policy, effective August 31, 2026, says plainly that it will never sell your data. It also says Flo doesn’t share your health data with third parties for marketing. Those are the two sentences you’d want any period app to make.

The policy also describes ad tools that are still in the app. If you consent, Flo sends personal data that isn’t health data to AppsFlyer, Firebase and TikTok Ad Manager to measure and target its own ads. AppsFlyer can pass it on to partners like Meta, Google Ads and Pinterest to find you or people like you. Flo’s App Store listing agrees. Under Data Used to Track You it lists Purchases, Location, Identifiers and Usage Data. Health data isn’t on that list.

Then there’s Anonymous Mode, which Flo says it rushed out after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Turning it on moves your cycle data to a new account with no name, email or device identifiers. Requests travel through a Cloudflare relay, so Cloudflare sees who you are but not your data, and Flo sees the data but not who you are. It’s free. It’s also one-way. Your old account is deleted, you can’t switch back, and features that need your identity stop working.

Is Flo safe to use now?

For most people, yes, with Anonymous Mode on. The sharing in these cases ended in early 2019. Since 2021 Flo has been under an FTC order that forbids it from misleading users about their data. Its current policy rules out the exact thing it was accused of. And Anonymous Mode is a real technical protection, not just a promise.

Two things keep us from a clean yes. Flo still runs ad attribution and tracking tools for non-health data, and its business still depends on promoting itself through ad networks. And its record shows that a policy can say one thing while the app does another. If that history is a deal-breaker for you, it’s a fair one. Pick an app with no ads and nothing under Data Used to Track You. Our guide to whether period tracker apps are safe covers the wider risks, including legal requests for data.

A five-minute check for any period app

1. Search the privacy policy for “sell” and for “advertising”. You want a plain no on both, with no hedge about trusted partners.
2. Read Data Used to Track You on the App Store listing. Empty is best. If health data is on it, walk away.
3. Look for ads in the app. An ad on screen means an ad network’s code is running inside it.
4. Find out how it makes money. A subscription you can see is a better sign than “free forever” with no explanation.
5. Find the delete button before you need it. You should be able to delete your account and data from inside the app.

Our private period tracker guide goes through each check in more depth and compares apps that keep data on the phone with ones that sync.

Where Plum fits

Plum is our period tracker for iPhone. It has no ads and never sells your health data or shares it with advertisers. Its App Store label has no Data Used to Track You section at all. It does need an Apple or Google sign-in and keeps your history on its servers, so it isn’t an on-device app. You can delete your account and everything in it from Security & Privacy in the app. Plum’s privacy label, line by line shows what it collects and why.