The digitalization of the reproductive body has engaged myriads of cutting-edge technologies in supporting people to know and tackle their intimate health. Generally understood as female technologies (aka female-oriented technologies or 'FemTech'), these products and systems collect a wide range of intimate data which are processed, transferred, saved and shared with other parties. In this paper, we explore how the "data-hungry" nature of this industry and the lack of proper safeguarding mechanisms, standards, and regulations for vulnerable data can lead to complex harms or faint agentic potential. We adopted mixed methods in exploring users' understanding of the security and privacy (SP) of these technologies. Our findings show that while users can speculate the range of harms and risks associated with these technologies, they are not equipped and provided with the technological skills to protect themselves against such risks. We discuss a number of approaches, including participatory threat modelling and SP by design, in the context of this work and conclude that such approaches are critical to protect users in these sensitive systems.

翻译：生殖健康的数字化进程催生了大量尖端技术，用于帮助人们了解和应对自身亲密健康问题。这类通常被称为女性科技（即面向女性的技术，或称"FemTech"）的产品与系统，会收集大量私密数据，并对这些数据进行处理、传输、存储及与第三方共享。本文探讨了该行业"数据饥渴"的特性，以及针对敏感数据缺乏有效保护机制、标准和监管所可能导致的复杂危害或用户能动性缺失问题。我们采用混合方法探究用户对这些技术安全与隐私（SP）的认知。研究结果表明，尽管用户能够预见与这些技术相关的各类危害和风险，但他们缺乏必要的技术技能来防范此类风险。我们在此项工作中讨论了若干方法，包括参与式威胁建模及内置安全与隐私设计（SP by design），并得出结论：这些方法对于保护敏感系统中的用户至关重要。