

This in turn could allow criminals to gather much more data about the victim, track their movements, identify their circle of friends and acquaintances. If the app included an option to show your place of work, it was fairly easy to match the name of a user and their page on a social network. User tracking capabilitiesįirst of all, we checked how easy it was to track users with the data available in the app. We studied the following online dating applications:īy de-anonymization we mean the user’s real name being established from a social media network profile where use of an alias is meaningless. We took the most popular apps and analyzed what sort of user data they were capable of handing over to criminals and under what conditions. We’re talking here about intercepting and stealing personal information and the de-anonymization of a dating service that could cause victims no end of troubles – from messages being sent out in their names to blackmail. But there is one less obvious threat not related to hooking up with strangers – and that is the mobile apps used to facilitate the process.

It seems just about everyone has written about the dangers of online dating, from psychology magazines to crime chronicles.
