What a health tracking app should never do with your data

A GLP-1 tracker holds some of the most personal information on your phone: what you take, how much, when, what you weigh, how you feel, what you eat, and sometimes photos of your body. That's health data, whatever the app calls it, and it deserves more care than most apps give it.

The trouble is that privacy policies are long and the important parts are easy to miss. This guide sets out six things a health tracking app should never do with your data, a few questions that cut through the small print, and how Hushweek answers each one.

Six things a health app should never do

1. Sell or share your health data

Your log should never be sold, rented, traded or "shared with partners". Watch for vague wording like "trusted third parties" or "to improve our services". If a policy can't say plainly that your health data isn't shared, assume it may be.

2. Use it for advertising

Health data shouldn't decide which ads you see, in the app or anywhere else. That includes advertising identifiers and "interest-based" ads built from what you log.

3. Track you with analytics

Analytics tools can record what you tap and when, and some send it to companies that profile people across many apps. A health app doesn't need to know which screens you visit to work well.

4. Make an account the price of entry

An account means your data lives on someone's server. Some people want that, for syncing between devices, and that's a fair choice. But it should be a choice, not a requirement before you can log your first dose.

5. Put your health on your lock screen

Notifications, widgets and watch faces are visible to people around you. An app shouldn't name your medicine there. We wrote a whole guide on reminders that keep your medicine private.

6. Hold your data hostage

You should be able to export everything you've logged, in a format you can open elsewhere, without paying for it or asking support. And deleting the app, or using a clear "erase" option, should actually erase it.

Questions that cut through a privacy policy

You don't have to read every word. Search the policy (or ask support) for clear answers to these:

If the answer to any of these is unclear, that's an answer in itself.

Don't forget the parts outside the app

Even a careful app sits inside a phone that has its own habits. A few settings are worth a look:

• Phone backups. iCloud Backup and Google's backup can include app data. That backup is held under your account by Apple or Google.
• Shared photo libraries. If you take progress photos with the camera app, they may land in a shared or synced library. Hushweek keeps the photos you add in its own folder on your phone and never uploads them, with or without an account.
• Health platforms. Connecting an app to Apple Health or similar is useful, but check what each app reads and writes. Hushweek reads only your weigh-ins from Apple Health and writes back the weigh-ins you log (with Pro, water and protein too), between the two apps on your phone.
• A passcode or Face ID. The simplest protection of all is a locked phone. An app lock adds a second layer; Hushweek's is free, in You › Privacy.

If an app can't tell you plainly where your data goes, it probably goes further than you'd like.

How Hushweek answers

Hushweek was designed around these rules from the first line of code:

• Without an account, everything you log stays on your phone, and we never receive it. An account is optional. If you sign in and have Pro, your log (never your photos) is backed up to your account so it comes back on a new phone, and deleting the account deletes that backup.
• No ads, no analytics, no advertising identifiers. Your data is never sold or used for marketing, and never used to train AI.
• Reminders and widgets never name your medicine.
• A free CSV export and a free backup file of your full history. Start over erases everything from your phone, and Delete account removes the account and its backup.
• Crash reports carry no health data, and you can switch them off.
• What does leave your phone is small and stated: a barcode number when you scan a food, the words you type into the Pro online food search, crash reports with no health data (unless you switch them off), purchase details for Pro, handled by the App Store or Google Play and RevenueCat, and, only if you sign in with Pro, the backup of your log in your account.

The details are in our privacy policy, written to be read.

Questions people ask