Dutch watchdog files complaint over Flo collecting and selling intimate data

The Dutch privacy rights group Bits of Freedom says the popular period-tracking app Flo is commercializing users’ intimate data.

The digital rights watchdog filed a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority against Flo, according to an RTL Nieuws report, which Cybernews machine translated.

The group claims that Flo collects and sells sensitive data about women’s health, including menstrual cycle, headaches, cramps, and their sexual activity. In addition, the app tracks whether women want to get pregnant or are trying to prevent pregnancy.

Bits of Freedom Director Evelyn Austin says that period tracking apps like Flo commercialize intimate health data.

“The more advertisers know about you, the more detailed your profile becomes and the better they can make predictions about your behavior. This allows them to serve you highly targeted advertisements, from which they make a lot of money,” Austin says.

The complaint follows the investigation by a consumer program Radar, which found that period tracking apps, including Flo, “carelessly handle” users’ privacy and intimate medical data.

The report warned that unclear privacy statements lead to sensitive data being shared with third parties, a claim that Flo disputed.

Flo has around 200,000 users in the Netherlands and about 420 million globally. This isn’t the first time the app has appeared on watchdogs’ radar.

In 2025, the company settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that Flo had shared the personal data of millions of users with Meta, Google, and other third parties.

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