What Dating Apps Know About You

- [Narrator] Your dating app probably knows you way better than you think.

Dating apps collect tons of information about you, and it's not all in service of finding you the perfect match.

When you sign up for a dating app, you might volunteer basic information, but some of these apps collect more information than you may realize, like where you live, work, or your race, religion, and political views, especially if you're sharing your location, which can be helpful for finding matches in your area, but also opens the door for these apps to gather information about the places you live, work, or visit regularly.

- For instance, if a bunch of people who have minoritized gender identity or sexual orientations keep showing up in a particular location and looking for matches, it starts to look like a sort of queer area.

So it starts to make these sort of inferences.

based on what other users who share some common information, what about them is showing up in this place.

- [Narrator] Some dating apps can track where you travel online, even after you leave the app, and if you link your dating account to your social media accounts, these apps may be able to access all kinds of personal information.

They use all this data to make predictions about who and what you might like.

- So this is a complicated space for me, where I'm like, "Well, is it really that bad that someone has my data?"

But again, here, the issue is not just the data that I've shared but data that you can find about me because of the data I've shared and that you can infer about me.

- [Narrator] The apps have the ability to collect all this information when you agree to the terms of service, but why are these apps collecting all of this data, and what are they doing with it?

- The primary reason is to make money, let's be honest.

So many dating apps have a sort of freemium model, where to use it initially is free, but to get better matches, they sell users features, and they collect additional information to inform those features.

- [Narrator] A second way that the apps can make money off of this information is by selling it to advertisers who can, in turn, create more targeted ads.

But for anyone concerned about privacy, there are steps you can take to reduce your risks.

First, check what kinds of permissions you've granted for the app to access your location, contacts, photos, or other social media accounts.

- Another thing you can do is to provide the minimal amount of information.

The mobile dating apps have really long sets of questions that you can answer to try to make your match more specific.

It's not clear that a more specific match is actually more likely to be what you're looking for, so maybe give it as little information as you can and cast a broader net.

- [Narrator] Finally, if you are going to stop using your account, it is important to delete your information and not just deactivate your account.

That way, your data isn't stored, but it really does just come down to what you're comfortable with, what your personal values are, and how much of your data you're willing to share.

(gentle music)