Calm

First reviewed April 20, 2022. Review updated, April 25, 2023

When we launched our review of Calm in 2022, the app initially earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label. We dinged them for their data collection and use practices and for how users could control their data, After our review came out, Calm reached out to us to discuss ways they could improve. We love it when companies do that! (Seriously, please, more companies do that...without yelling at us first).

After meeting with the folks over at Calm, they agreed to make a significant change to their privacy policy to make it clear all users, regardless of what privacy laws they live under, have the same rights to access and delete their data. Their privacy policy now reads, "Subject to certain limits and conditions provided under law, we honor the exercise of the right of access or deletion for all of our users, regardless of their location. Any Calm user may exercise this right by contacting us at [email protected]." People, that line there is a thing of beauty! You've no idea how hard it is to convince companies to include wording like that in their privacy policies. So, good work Calm! Thank you.

Calm isn't perfect. They do still collect a fair amount of personal information, including gathering data on you from third parties sources like marketing and advertising partners and social media sites. And they say they use this for making inferences about things like your gender and location. And they say they can use all this information for targeted, interest-based advertising. Not great, not great at all....but unfortunately pretty normal these days with these apps.

So in 2023, we find Calm improved from 2022. There's still more work they can do to be better for privacy for sure. But hey, baby steps, y'all, baby steps.

Read our review from 2022:

UPDATE June, 2022: Here's a thing Calm did to help calm this stressed out privacy researcher's frazzled nerves a little. After we launch our review, we had some productive conversations with them that resulted in them updating their privacy policy. On June 16, 2022 Calm change their privacy policy to clearly grant all users -- not only those in the EU and California living under stricter privacy laws -- the same rights to access and delete their data. This is progress. Thanks Calm.

Uhg...Calm, why oh why must you ruin our zen meditation vibe with stressful privacy practices? You know what's rather stressful? When a company says, "Calm uses your data to personalize your online experience and the advertisements you see on other platforms based on your preferences, interests, and browsing behavior." OK, so, there are certainly more stressful things in life. But still, what if we just want to meditate in peace without all our data being used to find ways to sell us more stuff or keep us on the app longer? Pardon us as we go take another deep breath.

Calm says they don't sell your personal information (yay!). Sadly, they say they can use it -- and other things like your actions, preferences, interests, machine learning, and browsing behavior -- to target you with ads and personalizations and the like. They also say they "may obtain information about you from publicly available sources, marketing and advertising partners, consumer research platforms, and/or business contact databases." Potentially gathering even more data on you from data brokers and advertising companies, nope, these are not calming privacy practices at all. Then there's this (unfortunately) common practice where they say they "also share aggregated or other information not subject to obligations under the data protection laws of your jurisdiction with third parties." Here's where we have to remind you that it's been found to be relatively easy to de-anonymize such data, data they say they can share without restriction.

What's the worst that could happen? Well, could Calm get to know all about your meditation practices, your mood, your gender, your location, and more. Then use or share that information to target you with ads about things, like a wine company thinking you're ripe for targeting with wine ads when you're using the app a lot because that might mean you're stressed out. But you're a recovering alcoholic and the wine ads add to your stress. It's just one potential scenario of how targeted ads based on on your behavior and identifiers on the app could go wrong. Not something any of us need when we just want to meditate in peace, dang it!