Dating apps kiss'n'tell all sorts of sensitive personal info
Interview Dating apps ask people to disclose all kinds of personal information in the hope of them finding love, or at least a hook-up.
What many may not know is that the majority of these lonely-hearts corners vacuum up way more user info than they need to, and they also do a terrible job safeguarding private data that they've collected. The Mozilla Foundation's latest research scoped out popular dating apps, and slapped Privacy Not Included warning labels on 22 of the 25 reviewed.
The Register sat down with Zoë MacDonald, Privacy Not Included researcher and writer, to discuss the findings, and you can watch our conversation below.
In addition to harvesting things like photos and details about your race, religion, political views, sexual preferences, HIV status, and weight – one-quarter of the apps surveyed also collected metadata from users' content. And at least one may store video chats, we're told.
"To be clear, none of the apps are particularly good at privacy," MacDonald said, noting that the team only doled out one "thumbs up," and that went to a queer dating app called Lex.
