Dating apps are selling your personal data.
Beware if you are using any dating app as a new report revealed that most dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and others might share or sell your personal information for advertising. Researchers at Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox web browser, looked at 25 apps and revealed that 22 of them don’t protect your privacy well.
“In their privacy policies, often the companies say that providing all this information is optional. And sometimes that’s true! Other times that’s a bit misleading, like when Tinder says they only collect your precise geolocation “with your consent” but the app won’t work without it. There’s more information the companies can collect that you might not even realize,” the researchers wrote in a blog post.
According to the report, about 25 per cent of the apps collect metadata from your content — which is information in the files about when the photo (or video) was taken, where, and what day. In addition, the report mentioned most dating apps, such as Hinge, Tinder, OKCupid, Match, Plenty of Fish, BLK, and BlackPeopleMeet, have access to precise geo-location data from their users.
Half of the dating apps the researchers reviewed e already using artificial intelligence. Tinder, OkCupid, Facebook Dating, Happn, CoffeeMeetsBagel, and Tantan all use AI in their matching algorithms. “With little information about how these algorithms work, w are worried they could double-down on real-world biases in dating like sexual racism,” the researchers said.
“With AI in the mix, we’re dealing with a whole ‘nother level of potential privacy problems,’ they wrote in a blog post. As per the date, some apps, like Hinge, even collect location information in the background when the app is not actively being used.
For all dating apps, here are top three privacy tips, everyone should follow:
– Treat your dating profile more like your LinkedIn profile — assume it could be seen by anyone and only post photos and details you’re OK with being public.
– Don’t log in with third party accounts and don’t link your social media accounts to your profile. That invites even more sharing of your personal information across more places that don’t always do a good job with it.
– Limit app permissions where possible from your device settings (like your location, address book, and camera roll).
