Sharing More Than Just Your Heart
No matter how much you know about your matches, Tinder knows more about you. The senseless swiping of Tinder has certainly arisen since the platform’s humble beginnings in 2012 with it accessing it’s more than 57 million users 24/7 location information and more ‘in order to function’.
This had led myself and others to question, how safe are we really on Tinder? Whilst rigorous academic research on the dating app has been limited, it’s prevalence in society and the question of our data need be asked.
The app’s approach to romance is straightforward and cutthroat using three criteria: looks, availability and location. In the search for love, sex or something else, you must connect your Facebook account or mobile number to sign up, sharing your photos and basic biographical information along with some snappy bio about how you’re “Just here for a dog” or “Really like pasta”. You share these things and your geo-location, hunting your potential partner(s) within a set kilometre radius, continuously swiping in hope of a match.
Given people can gauge a potential suitor’s attractiveness in a glance, Tinder draws users to churn through profiles, hours on end. Research has also found in terms of psychological conditioning, the app’s interface is perfectly constructed to afford rapid swiping and addictivity. Since users don’t know which swipe will bring the ‘reward’ of a match, Tinder randomly disperses potential members using a variable ratio reward schedule. By using the same reward system as slot machines and video games, the app is addictive to users, encouraging you to continually swipe and in turn, hand over more data. The question being how much?
The amount is staggering to say the least. In 2017 with the much needed help of a human rights lawyer and privacy activist, The Guardian’s Judith Duportail was granted access to her personal data kept by Tinder.
Duportail’s article triggered worldwide digital discussion and social media outrage as to the volume of data Tinder had collected and difficulty for users to acquire it. Global negative sentiment led to the app needing to make a change. So it did. In late 2017 the app quietly launched “Data Download” option. But there’s a catch. It only offers a look at the personal data controlled by the user, basic profile information such as your age, photos, your messages with ‘matches’, purchase history and whether you use the Spotify and Instagram plug-ins. What’s not included is the in-depth data Tinder accrues such as your common geolocations, cookies information, phone ID number which Duportail received. It is clear this Data Download offer is more of a greenwashing tactic similar to CSR initiatives taken by corporations to build their goodwill bank than actually doing good by their stakeholders. Questioning the platform’s morality.
Source: Tinder
Whilst personal data circulation without user control or knowledge is an issue within itself, how safe is all our sensitive swiping data? Relatively safe according to data analysts. Before June 2018 however; Tinder lacked the standard most basic encryption necessary to keep your photos, swipes and matches hidden from hackers and snoops. But since adopting basic web encryption, Tinder is now protecting user privacy from hackers, but is still monetising your data to third-party advertising agencies in exchange for advertising revenue. At the end of the day, your pages of data owned by Tinder is somewhat protected from hacking, but the more data is collected and shared to third-party agencies, the more likely it is to be potentially breached in the future.
My advice? Take your chances offline — and instead of swiping left to potential partners, swipe left and delete Tinder instead.
