With the sophisticated technology that has become available, especially in the hacking and cybersecurity field, data breaches are occurring constantly. This is the same for the fitness and health circles of apps, as data breaches can be just as common here. Harvard Medical School has an article that reveals research on almost 16,000 free health mobile apps, dissecting their programming to see how each handles user personal data. They found that at least 4% of the apps gathered and transmitted user personal data, and the researchers behind this study believe that the percentage may be even higher in real-world use.
There are notable examples of major organizations becoming the victims of a data breach from an outside third party. MyFitnessPal, an app that I use and recommended previously, happened to be a victim of an enormous breach back in 2018, where 150 million accounts on the site were compromised and exposed. The data part of the breach included personal information such as email addresses, usernames, and passwords. Although this type of breach was very bad, MyFitnessPal’s parent company, Under Armour, acted responsibly and efficiently and quickly notified every user of the disaster. Under Armour mentioned that it utilized the password hashing function bcrypt which transformed most of their passwords into disordered assortments of characters. Although Under Armour enacted bcrypt for most of their passwords, they did admit that some fractions of the exposed passwords were only hashed using SHA-1, which has a reputation for being a very weak function. While there isn’t an exact source for how the company was breached, there are reasons to believe that these examples had a hand in it, along with the fact that they kept too much IT work in-house instead of looking for more outside specialized experts. While it is a shame that this event happened, I do think Under Armour managed the damage respectfully and even offered advice to users on how they can keep information more private, like consistent password changing and not falling for any suspicious links.
Bradley, T. (2019, January 31). Security Experts Weigh In On Massive Data Breach Of 150 Million MyFitnessPal Accounts. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2018/03/30/security-experts-weigh-in-on-massive-data-breach-of-150-million-myfitnesspal-accounts/
Mujezinovic, D. (2023, February 9). Health and Fitness Apps Are Violating Your Privacy: How to Protect Yourself. Makeuseof.com. https://www.makeuseof.com/health-fitness-apps-privacy/
myfitnesspal. (2018, April 2). MyFitnessPal Account Security Issue: Frequently Asked Questions. Myfitnesspal. https://content.myfitnesspal.com/security-information/FAQ.html
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