The level of privacy and protection of online dating users’ data

Online dating mobile applications security from leaking user’s personal data

One of five adults in America aged from 25 to 34 has used one or more online dating sites and mobile applications have opened up new channels for online dating services to achieve more clients. However, this does raise some concerns about their level of privacy and how data of users is being protected.

nVisium, mobile security specialist, has looked at the characteristics in 30 of most popular dating applications for Android and iOS. It found that approximately 80 per cent of these apps leaked personal info to other third-party services and 70 per cent had problems that would allow a real identity of a user to be disclosed.

Other results of the study include the other fact that proves that 60 per cent of apps send users’ information across the Web without any protection and 50 per cent store all info on the device without proper security.

Precautionary measures

To use dating applications you generally should not tell to it much information about you, like phone numbers, dates of birth, addresses and so on. One or more leak of these things may give away real identity of you and leave you absolutely open to any social engineering or even worse.

Half of applications were found out to be storing login credentials of users in a not a cipher form, potentially allowing users to fall into some wrong hands, and six percent only offered in-app to the uses the passcode locking.

If your personal information does leak then you’re going to need GSOH, so to protect your personal information and yourself, nVisium recommends you to turn off advertisements and location sharing in the application settings. You also should remove the data as for geolocation from the Exif info of the files that you share. Consequently, you have to set a on your device passcode at the highest line of protection. Also take care always not to leave your device unattended.

Help online dating services to protect you

Every online dating application should always remember all these precautionary measures and make use of it in the real life. Don’t forget that the users of the best online dating websites can protect themselves in a proper way. The services also should give us protection, but without our efforts they are sometimes helpless to make our personal information protected.