Keeping Your Data Personal: The Apps and Products that Protect Privacy by Design | V&A

Why It Matters

As law and corporate surveillance tighten, privacy-first products protect vulnerable users and preserve access to sensitive services; design choices about data storage and encryption now have direct legal and life-or-death consequences. Widespread adoption of these approaches could reshape consumer expectations and regulatory pressures around data minimization and user control.

Summary

Speakers trace the shift from hidden data practices and surveillance capitalism to a ‘privacy by design’ movement that prioritizes users’ rights from a product’s inception. They highlight historical and contemporary privacy tools—from Faraday-style phone pouches and Wi‑Fi signal blockers to crypto phones, Onion Pi Tor routers, and minimalist encrypted handsets—that reduce data exposure. The talk spotlights Euki, a nonprofit, privacy-first period tracking app that stores user data only on-device and offers reproductive-health resources without a backend or data monetization. Creators frame such tools as essential responses to government and corporate data collection, especially as health data can be weaponized against marginalized communities.

Original Description

Where does your data go and who has access to it?

Surveillance capitalism is the idea that personal data can be collected, bought and sold by tech companies. It can be difficult to know where our data is, who has access to it, and how it might be used. This becomes increasingly urgent when personal data can be weaponised against marginalised communities, particularly in areas like sexual and reproductive health.

This video explores the concept of 'privacy by design', first developed in 1995, which proposes that user privacy should be embedded at the very beginning of the technological design process. It looks at specifically designed objects in the V&A collections including the OFF Pocket, Cryptophone, and the Cyborg Un Plug, which block signals and encrypt data to resist this surveillance.

Here, we spotlight Euki, a free, non-profit, evidence-based period tracking app launched in 2019, currently on display in the 1900-Now galleries at V&A South Kensington.

Euki allows users to track what's going on with their body while providing information about sexual and reproductive health. Developed by researchers in collaboration with the activist group Women Help Women, the app takes a privacy-first approach and does not have a backend. This means there is no cloud storage: any data entered into the app exists only on the individual’s phone – nowhere else.

Chapters:

00:00 Surveillance capitalism and data privacy

00:29 What is privacy by design?

00:58 Public concern in 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden

01:11 Design projects against surveillance

01:21 OFF Pocket, Cyborg Un Plug, Cryptophone, Punkt Phone

02:29 Euki period and sexual health app, Caitlin Gerdts, Board Chair of Euki

03:22 Who created Euki?

04:01 How does Euki work?

04:24 How does Euki protect privacy? No cloud

04:44 Euki’s mission

04:54 Limitations on abortion and sexual & reproductive health information

05:22 Learning about digital privacy, exchange of information

05:57 Weaponising data against marginalised communities

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Discover more about the Euki sexual health app: @724809/euki-mobile-application/

Find out more in our 1900 – Now collection: @ions/design-1900-now

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