Health care is an important matter. Part of this care, unknown to men, is tracking women’s cycles. For this purpose, there is a convenient programme developed by the brothers Dmitry and Yuri Gursky from Belarus. The Flo app predicts the onset of menstruation, shows the progression of the entire cycle, indicates the days favourable for conception, and so on. At the same time, of course, it carries out a mass of useful tasks for women. And it also shares this data with the company Meta, with a dozen other data buyers, selling personal life and health status to an unlimited circle of persons – from insurance companies to spies, probably. The company Flo Health and the launch of the app to the masses were financed by the not-unknown Alexey Gubarev (through Haxus), a patriot of Cyprus, VNV and Target Global.
What a wonderful and interesting company of investors! Alexey Gubarev from Haxus (now called Palta), VNV – formerly having the more understandable name Vostok New Ventures, and even earlier – Vostok Nafta. Founded by Gazprom. And finally Target Global of the “Portuguese” Roman Abramovich. It is easy to notice that all the investments are connected with services that process large volumes of personal data.
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When it emerged that Flo was financed by Alexey Gubarev, Gazprom and Roman Abramovich, and that a significant part of Flo.Health’s own income comes from data buyers, a scandal erupted. In fact, the sale of the data itself became known thanks to the Facebook case. Zuckerberg’s brainchild, in the course of an investigation, admitted that it bought data on the menstruation of millions of women from Flo and experimented with targeted advertising. To whom did Facebook resell this data further? Where else did Flo sell the data?
The history of Flo’s data sales
The company that knew more about your knickers and tampons than your mother did, and more about your nervous breakdowns than your psychotherapist did, successfully sold to Google, Facebook and other interested parties the most intimate things: cycles, pregnancies, moods. Millions of women trusted it with intimate matters, and it traded them wholesale.
In 2020, the FTC finally noticed that since 2016 Flo had been briskly leaking data to third parties, while hiding behind fine words about privacy. Before that, in 2019, the Wall Street Journal had already hinted at which way the wind was blowing. The result – a settlement in 2021: notify users, ask permission, conduct an independent audit. The audit, of course, was completed on time. Everyone is satisfied, everyone is smiling.
In 2024, the Supreme Court of British Columbia certified a class action. In 2025 – another ruling, already national in scale, except for Quebec. Flo, of course, appealed. By the middle of 2026, no hearing had yet been scheduled – the courts proceed unhurriedly, and the data leaks out even more unhurriedly.
In parallel, in the USA – the consolidated Frasco v. Flo Health lawsuit. The defendants: Flo, Meta, Google, Flurry. The violations range from CIPA to the California law on the confidentiality of medical information. Flurry bought its way out for $3.5 million in March 2025, Google – for $48 million just before the trial. Flo held out until 31 July 2025, threw in $8 million in the middle of the process and promised to display a notice on its website about its commitment to privacy for a year. Well, at least something.
Where could this data have gone and what significance could it have?
We do not very much believe in the principledness of Gazprom, Alexey Gubarev, the Gursky brothers and Roman Abramovich with regard to clients’ data. But we do believe that, despite the “commitment to privacy”, a statement that commits them to nothing, the data could be used anywhere. How dangerous could this be? Completely! Let us recall at least the recent scandal with sports watches that gave away the approach of an aircraft carrier. By the way, the portfolios of the aforementioned funds are full of sports and medical programmes. But that is probably a coincidence!