Remote dating: How do the apps safeguard our data?

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The pandemic and the restrictions that came with it have led to an increase in the popularity of dating apps. For example, the total number of swipes on Tinder increased by 11% last year, with the daily number of swipes surpassing the 3 billion mark for the first time as early as March 2020. This is hardly surprising when you consider that many places where people used to meet and go on dates were shut down repeatedly in 2020 and at the beginning of 2021.

The increased activity on dating apps could be accompanied by increased associated risks for their users. Users may face some of the following threats:

• Identification of the user by third parties. Strangers can gain access to a user’s personal data, including their real name and information about where they live, work or This information can then be used for stalking or doxing.
  
• Theft of login credentials.
  
• Some of the most popular scams include asking users to transfer money under various pretexts, asking for “nudes” to be sent which are then used as blackmail in “sextortion scams”, as well as sending links to phishing websites, where users are tricked into entering their bank card details.
  

Whether a user will fall victim to any of these scams is largely dependent on the security measures that are implemented in the app and the kind of vulnerabilities it has. In 2017, we analyzed nine popular dating apps and revealed the following:

• Six apps allowed people to pinpoint a user’s location.
  
• Four apps made it possible to find out a user’s real name and track down their social media accounts.
  
• Four apps allowed an adversary to intercept potentially sensitive information they transfer.
  

We decided to see whether the situation has improved in 2021, so we looked at the apps with the most users around the world, as well as ones which received high ratings in publications such as CNET, PC Mag and Tom’s Guide. The resulting sample included both generic dating apps and niche apps for LGBT dating, polyamorous relationships etc.:

• Tinder — one of the world’s most popular dating apps. Downloaded more than 100 million times from Google Play.
  
• OkCupid — downloaded more than 10 million times from Google Play.
  
• Badoo — another very popular dating app. Downloaded more than 100 million times from Google Play.
  
• Bumble — an application where women make the first move. Downloaded more than 10 million times from Google Play, with 42 million monthly active users during the third quarter of 2020.
  
• Mamba — downloaded more than 10 million times from Google Play.
  
• Pure — an app for casual hookups and anonymous dating. Downloaded more than 1 million times from Google Play.
  
• Feeld — an app which allows you to search for partners in polyamorous relationships. Downloaded more than 1 million times from Google Play.
  
• Happn — an application for dating with random people you cross paths with. Downloaded over 50 million times from Google Play.
  
• Her — a dating app catering to LGBTQ+ women. More than 1 million downloads from Google Play.
  

Signing up

Most of the apps that were analyzed ask users to provide a phone number for account verification when they sign up to send them an SMS message with a confirmation code. Accounts created using numbers provided by free online services for receiving SMS messages without a phone are quickly banned, which makes creating fake profiles a little more difficult.

All the services apart from Pure also have the option of signing up using a Facebook login or through another social network. When an existing social media account is used for registration, some apps don’t require a phone number for account verification, as long as no suspicions are raised by the date when the social media account was created, the number of friends or other account information.

All the profile photos from the Facebook page are added to the dating profile by default in most of the apps when a user signs up using Facebook.
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