Privacy Commissioner and dating apps
February 14, 2017 |
Dating apps are notorious for both collecting a huge amount of highly sensitive personal information and being the subject of data breaches. Ashley Madison data breach being just the most dramatic instance.
The Privacy Commissioner has issued a dos and don’ts on 4 dating apps, Tinder, Grindr, Happn and Bumble. As far as it goes it is a reasonable description on how the dating apps work, where they get the personal information and what they do with it.
This statement is part of the Privacy Commissioner’s endless round of soft education. As far as it goes it is fine. But it is only half, if that, of what a regulator should do. Changing the culture through enforcement action is a necessity. Unfortunately the Privacy Commissioner has abandoned the field in that respect.
The Statement provides:
Dating apps are all about getting personal.
But they can also share a lot of your personal information, and not just with your hook ups.
So before sending your smoothest icebreaker, check how you can protect your personal information when sharing your dating profile.
Swipe right to better privacy on Tinder
Tinder links to your Facebook account, which means the information published on your Facebook can be collected by Tinder’s parent company, along with the information and content you share on Tinder (including your chats). You can change or delete the information from your Facebook if you don’t want it to be collected by Tinder.
Once on Tinder don’t give away all of your personal details in your profile — carefully select the information you share. For example, you may not want to broadcast your contact details or other social media profiles publicly on Tinder.
Read Tinder’s privacy policy for more information.
Check what personal information you reveal on Grindr
Remember, anyone can sign up to Grindr and see your profile, so you should consider any information you put in your profile as being public.
You can also choose to link some other social media profiles to your Grindr profile, so consider what you make public on each social media account you connect.
Grindr’s privacy policy provides more information.
Consider privacy before crossing paths on Happn
Happn also uses information from your Facebook account to build a profile. If you want to change your first name, age and gender on Happn, you will need to change these details on Facebook.
Happn tracks your location to show when you are close to other Happn users, so ensure you are comfortable with this before signing up to the app. You can edit your personal information, including your profile picture, if you’d prefer to avoid people easily finding out more about you or finding your other social media profiles.
Read Happn’s privacy policy to find out more about how your personal information is managed.
Be educated about privacy on Bumble
Bumble pre-fills your profile with information on your Facebook account. The information automatically uploaded includes your age, location, job title and education history. If you don’t want information such as your job or education information to be shown on Bumble, you can delete the information from Facebook or deny Bumble access to the information on the initial permissions screen.
Find out more through Bumble’s Privacy Policy.
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