Most fertility-tracking apps are unreliable but free apps work best

By Jessica Hamzelou

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Fertility-tracking apps can provide misleading information, and shouldn’t be relied upon to help conceive or as a contraceptive tool, according to an analysis of mobile phone apps available in the UK and Canada. The most reliable apps tend to be the free ones.

There are hundreds of apps that offer the ability to track periods in order to either achieve or avoid pregnancy. To find out how reliable they might be, Joyce Harper at University College London and her colleagues …