The Dark Side of Online Dating Platforms and Apps

In the pursuit of romance, sex and hookups, many of us have poured our heart and personal data into online dating platforms and applications in the hopes of being matched with the ‘one’.

Blinded by love, I, like many of us, am guilty of not thinking twice about the consequences of sharing all my private data with big data corporations like Tinder and eHarmony. To be honest, I am more worried when I am on Tinder about ‘swiping right’ by accident on a really cute guy and missing out (I’ve done this way too many times).

With data leaks and privacy breaches on the rise, we need to investigate if we can still trust online dating platforms’ and applications’ gatekeepers with the storage and use of our personal data.

Remember the Ashley Maddison dating platform massive data leak in 2015? The hacker-attack on the online dating platform, which previously promised anonymity for user identities, exposed 32 million married cheaters’ personal and financial data, with many users suffering severe online harassment.

Online dating platforms and mobile applications like Tinder and eHarmony act as an intermediary between end users, advertisers and professional content producers: creating cleaning, analysing, selling and harvesting data

The convergence of our public and private lives associated with these platforms, among the competing interests of the corporations supplying the platforms, has left many critics questioning if we are all being exploited for data for advertisers and data miners.

Our personal data starts getting collected and analysed for sale to third parties from the moment we hit ‘sign up’. This sign up process is often delegated to social media platforms to collect a bigger chunk of data.

For example, Tinder uses cross platform connectivity with social networking platform Facebook for identity verification and to bring our contact list, pictures, work history, birthday and educational background and so on across, enforcing the norms of one platform in another. Tinder also connects to Instagram’s platform to bring across users’ photos and contact lists.

This cross-platform connectivity provides Tinder users with the affordances of social media platforms networks effects, offering matches the chance to speak and interact with mutual friends and a wide range of possible love interests.

I know, I have certainly been surprised more than once when swiping on Tinder and stumbled across a mutual friend’s profile from primary school, I forgot I even knew.

But, at what cost does this connectivity come at? Facebook data security is flawed to say the least, with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal and massive data breach highlighting the risks involved in trusting big data with your personal information.

I like many of us have also been fooled into thinking that the sign-up process is where the collection of our data stops. News flash: big data keeps watching over your shoulder, storing and analysing all user activity on the platform. As Tinder privacy policy states, ‘We automatically collect information from your browser or device when you visit our Service…”

From every time you swipe right or left, to the length of time between viewing a profile and contacting other users, Tinder knows what you’re up to. This was all too true for a French reporter for The Guardian, who requested her data from tinder and was shocked to receive 800 pages worth of information Tinder knew about her.

I am scared to think how many pages worth of information Tinder has on me, after the many years I have been using it. Let’s just say, it is probably a lot more than 800 pages.

If you also find yourself desperate enough to pay for any additional premium subscription services or fall into the marketing trap of clicking on ads that appear on the mobile dating app, you will essentially be handing over the keys to your financial data for use by tracking technology.

But, if your willing to hand the keys over to your data I guess you do have to take some responsibility at some point for your actions right? At least that’s what my mum keeps telling me.

Tinder also relies on geographic location data to pair you with potential hook-ups in your area, location disclosure to third parties is also a significant regulatory issue for privacy. As, if this data, along with your personal information gets into the wrong hands, scammers may try and imitate your identity and digital footprint to exploit you.

All this information Tinder collects about you is also shared with their parent company Match Group Inc. and their umbrella of dating platforms, third-party companies and data brokers.

If you are now finding yourself in full panic mode like I was when I found this out, and you are now scrambling to find the delete button and erase any trace of you on the application, I would think twice. Your personal and financial data is actually retained on Tinder’s company servers, like many dating platforms, for “as long as we need it for legitimate business purposes.”

While online dating platforms and applications claim they are doing us a favour collecting our personal data to optimize our user experience and improve technology, they are really just trying to increase the opportunity to monetize the experience.

The lack of strict security and regulation around online matchmaking platforms and applications surrounding stored personal and financial data points to the need for increased regulation to restore trust in the online platforms’ and applications’ safety.

Now, I hope I haven’t scared you away from online dating platforms and applications forever, because how else are we all meant to meet anyone special in the 21st century technological world… at a movie cinema, restaurant, church or bar like our parents…no thanks I’d rather keep swiping right.