Alarm bells sounded across the US as citizens considered privacy implications of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe v. Wade. News warnings advising deletion of period tracking apps sparked fears that resulted in huge drops and gains for different apps – and sometimes both happened on the same platform. But the problem is, many decisions (including for one app that saw a 6,000% increase in its average daily downloads) were based on corporate messaging and gut impressions, rather than on what consumers knew about given app privacy practices.

Privacy spending budgets are going up and corporate executives are concerned, but only 59% of those surveyed by Womble Bond Dickson law firm, felt their organization was “very prepared” to meet state guidelines in new US consumer privacy legislation. Further, 88% said they would prefer having a federal law to more state regulations. While 89% reported their tech budget had increased, the majority indicated it did so at a moderate pace.