Project:Dating Privacy
Description
Dating Privacy aims to contribute with data literacy and gaining control over personal information in a secured and ethical manner for end users.
My co-founders and I -with some of us being dating app users- have started this collective as a social movement after identifying several privacy risks one is confronted to when looking for a date online: unwanted ads, harms resulting from incorrect profiling and predictions, the possibility of phishing and identity theft.
Dating Privacy is a collective formed by members coming from different countries and disciplines (mathematics, sociology, journalism, law, physics) and foreparts (academia, private, independent, citizen NGO).
Contact e-mail: mailto:datingprivacy@personaldata.io
Twitter @datingprivacy
Meetings online at https://epfl.meet.switch.ch/dating-data
Every first Wednesday of the month at 8:15 pm (CET)
Past event:
“Dating Privacy” Collective Launch: Our Plan To Change the ‘Data for Dates’ Paradigm – Friday 12th Feb at 7:30 pm (CET)
link to the presentation https://tinyurl.com/20210212datingprivacy
Meetup event: https://www.meetup.com/tech4goodLIN/events/276275535/
Linkedin event https://www.linkedin.com/events/datingprivacy-collectivelaunch-6765208415816974336/about/
Subscribe to our mailing list: https://framaforms.org/dating-privacy-1613154652
Objectives
- Implement tools that allow users to request and analyse their data
- Find and ask for SAR with a concrete example and cooperate with communities in order to 1 increase the impact 2 relay the info
- Enrich the wiki with data structures extracted from the SARs
- Develop methodologies that allow for research without dependency on commercial platforms
- Formalize the working group and project with an official legal entity
Partners
Partners:personaldata.io and MyData Vaud
Recommended practices
- Start requesting your data via this link https://labs.letemps.ch/interactive/2020/demander-ses-donnees/
- Type in the box the dating app name you use
- Copy-paste the message and email address
- Send it and wait for your file
- Already requested your data and received a file? Contribute with the wiki and map what your dating app collects: https://wiki.personaldata.io/wiki/Item:Q3569
- Are you an Android phone user? Download Exodus Privacy helps you to know which trackers and permissions are embedded in dating apps installed on your device.
- Configure your privacy settings on your dating app.
- Check out Mozilla privacy test on different dating apps
- Request deleting your data on a dating app when you stop using the app via the settings or sending an email. It is not enough to uninstall the app
Problems Identified
- Sharing personal data with third parties which is not necessary for the app functioning. The Grindr case study. Check third-parties that are the biggest players
- Scams, phishing, fake profiles
- Users are affected by malicious behaviours 1 and 2 so how are dating apps moderating this and protecting users via the analysis of their personal data?
- Between 10-20% of users find a partner in France, Switzerland and United States. Do users really get the outcomes they want from the app in exchange for providing their data?
- Subscription rates change according to user demographic characteristics (ex. Tinder)
- The app ignores your settings
Members
- Jessica Pidoux works on revealing biases in Tinder's secretive matching algorithms.shttps://jessicapidoux.info/ Pidoux
- Paul-Olivier Dehaye obtained the first personal data file from Tinder along with author Judith Duportail https://bit.ly/3cUOyTB Podehaye
- Marie-Pierre maps the dating app ecosystem and delves into dating app patents Genferei
- Frank has revealed privacy risks on Hinge and is currently being messed around by Hinge, Bumble and Tinder having asked for his data https://bit.ly/2J8mKOo Frandrews
- HermineL
- Judith H. digs into regulation policies and howonline dating interacts with collective practices and communities
TO DO / On going
' | planning | in progress | complete | who |
*Map the data ecosystem | x | all | ||
*Next meeting Define the case study with questions we want to analyse | x | |||
*Add downloads per app in the wiki. | x | |||
*Add ranking per app in CH, FR, UK the wiki. | x | J, MP | ||
*Dating app list https://tinyurl.com/goaldatingdata | ||||
*Add link to privacy policy | x | |||
*Add examples of silver dating apps (ref Le Monde) | x | MP | ||
*Add examples of community apps | x | MP | ||
*Check if policy documents are the same in different languages FR, EN, ... ( i.e TikTok doesn't) | ||||
*Defining the project scope | x | |||
*Organize media articles per data | ||||
*Develop tools for data literacy | ||||
*Define the methodology: data protection protocol and data collection and analysis method (EPFL Grasp tool or other?) | ||||
*Data analysis | x | |||
*Patent search and analysis | MP? | |||
*Privacy policies analysis | ||||
*Email us other ideas you have for contributing | x | all | ||
*Publish launch video | x | J | ||
*Communicate regularly | X | F | ||
*Keep updated mailing list subscribers | x | |||
*Create a website | x | |||
*Document our tests in the website | ||||
*Document SAR procedures | x | H | ||
*Write ethical chart | all |
Dating apps' list
- Wiki
-->list of dating apps available on this wiki with ranking on apple and Android
- Wikidata https://wikidata.org
-->list of dating apps available on wikidata
- Forum https://forum.personaldata.io
- Notes https://annuel2.framapad.org/p/dating-data-9kf7 (old notes)
Privacy Policies
Links can be found in the wiki
Princeton-Leuven Longitudinal Corpus of Privacy Policies. Front-end here: https://privacypolicies.cs.princeton.edu/ghfront/ and the repository here: https://github.com/citp/privacy-policy-historical
Advertisement third parties
“Out Of Control” – A Review Of Data Sharing By Popular Mobile Apps published in January 2020
see Technical report https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/mnemonic-security-test-report-v1.0.pdf
report https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2020-01-14-out-of-control-final-version.pdf
Complaint letters https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/complaints-against-grindr-and-five-third-party-companies/
PUbMatic
LUMAscape https://www.okanjo.com/blog/2016/12/14/ssp-dsp-dmp-rtb-wtf
Patents
List of Match Group patents: https://policies.tinder.com/intellectual-property/intl/en
Tinder Patents:
number={US20160154569 A1}, author = {Rad, Sean and Carrico, Todd M. and Hoskins, Kenneth B and Stone, James C.}, url = {https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?II=0&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20160602&CC=US&NR=2016154569A1&KC=A1#}, title = {Matching Process System And Method},
number={US9733811B2}, author = {Carrico, Todd M. and Hoskins, Kenneth B and Rad, Sean and Stone, James C. and Badeen, Jonathan}, url = {https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/050234419/publication/US10203854B2?q=pn\%3DUS10203854B2}, title = {Matching Process System And Method},
Match Group SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USER COMMUNICATION IN A NETWORK https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=2020137019A1&KC=A1&FT=D&DB=en.worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP&date=20200430&rss=true#
Hinge: Brevet publié en 2013 puis abandonné, jamais délivré. https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=2013066972A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20130314&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP#
Media
- June 2020, "Exclusive: Winning bidder for Grindr has ties to Chinese owner" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-sanvicente-exclusive-idUSKBN2391AI
- 2021, ""Grindr" to be fined almost € 10 Mio over GDPR complaint. The Gay Dating App was illegally sharing sensitive data of millions of users." https://noyb.eu/en/gay-dating-app-grindr-be-fined-almost-eu-10-mio
- 2016, "What Tinder and Halo Have in Common" https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/how-tinder-matchmaking-is-like-warcraft/424350/
- Top iOS dating apps are exposing your personal life to hackers https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-dating-apps-exposing-your-personal-life-to-hackers
- Investidating: why deep photo analysis has become part of online hook-ups https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/05/tinder-online-dating-apps-photos
- How algorithms on dating apps are contributing to racism in our love lives https://officialfamemagazine.com/2020/06/28/how-algorithms-on-dating-apps-are-contributing-to-racism-in-our-love-lives/
- April 2017, "Dans le laboratoire de la «fake science» [...] le Danois Emil Kirkegaard, nouvelle coqueluche de l'extrême droite" https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/laboratoire-fake-science
- Live streaming drives growth in chinese dating app momo (2017) https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/momo-live-streaming/
- Blinq dating app uses AI to judge hotness https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/11/blinq-dating-app-uses-ai-to-judge-hotness/
- Why we need a dating app that understands Nash’s equilibrium https://hackernoon.com/why-we-need-a-dating-app-that-understands-nashs-equilibrium-2dc4a862b47e
- Tinder Select: You’re Not Cool Enough To Get the Secret Version of Tinder https://fortune.com/2017/03/08/tinder-select-exclusive-members/
- Tinder Elo Score: https://www.fastcompany.com/3054871/whats-your-tinder-score-inside-the-apps-internal-ranking-system
- Irish Data Protection Commission: https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/data-protection-commission-launches-statutory-inquiry-mtch-technology-services-limited-tinder
- Tinder and GDPR Paul-Olivier D. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/27/tinder-data-privacy-tech-eu-general-data-protection-regulation
- Match Group financial report: https://s22.q4cdn.com/279430125/files/doc_financials/2020/q1/MTCH-1Q-2020-Earnings-Release_Final.pdf
- Gillette study on Tinder: https://web.archive.org/web/20150323010313/http://shavetest.com/
- https://youtu.be/HSYaRgKYeek
- https://www.esquire.com/style/grooming/a32478/women-on-tinder-dont-like-beards-020514/
- Data privacy "Five Reasons You Should Delete Hinge" https://bit.ly/2J8mKOo
- How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from dating apps like Mingle https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqm5x/us-military-location-data-xmode-locate-x
- Video integration on Hinge "Seeking a Partner for the End of the World" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/style/cuffing-season.html
- Fake profiles in online dating "Online-Dating: Auf diesen Portalen flirten Fake-Profile" https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/digitale-welt/onlinedienste/onlinedating-auf-diesen-portalen-flirten-fakeprofile-21848
- MENSTRUAPPS – How to turn your period into money (for others) https://chupadados.codingrights.org/en/menstruapps-como-transformar-sua-menstruacao-em-dinheiro-para-os-outros/
- "Tinder lance son chat vidéo. Quid de la modération ?" https://siecledigital.fr/2020/07/09/tinder-chat-video-moderation/
- "Après huit mois de retard, le service de rencontres de Facebook arrive en France" https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/10/22/apres-huit-mois-de-retard-le-service-de-rencontres-de-facebook-arrive-en-france_6056968_4408996.html
- "Tesla owners looking for love can now join a dating network exclusively for 'like-minded Elon stans'" https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-dating-app-owners-only-car-obsessed-elon-musk-stans-2020-8?r=US&IR=T
- "We do not believe in algorithms: Happn CEO" https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/10/05/we-do-not-believe-in-algorithms-happn-ceo.html?__source=sharebar%7Clinkedin&par=sharebar
- Video documentary: How dating turns into business.... "Chat moderators" are employees with fake profiles replying 24/7 to users who pay per message and believe they are writing to "potential partners" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tttHVfn_joo&feature=share
- Judith Duportail article "I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/tinder-personal-data-dating-app-messages-hacked-sold?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=245390&subid=20455723&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
- Emmanuel Kessous, sociologue du numérique "La vie privée dans l'économie numérique. Une approche par les usages" https://www.slideshare.net/lpg/la-vie-prive-dans-lconomie-numrique-une-approche-par-les-usages
- Coffee Meets Bagel dating app "trying to end #ghosting" by showing user activity stats! http://engt.co/2ngTA2u
- How To Get A Match, According to Tinder’s Sociologist https://www.fastcompany.com/3062454/how-to-get-a-match-according-to-tinders-sociologist
- Intéressant car il existe aussi Pokémon GO Dating "« Pokémon Go » : les multiples facteurs des inégalités géographiques" https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/08/03/pokemon-go-les-multiples-facteurs-des-inegalites-geographiques_4977738_4408996.html
- Love at first swipe, What happens to your data when you look for love, Lunchtime conference of European Data Protection Supervisor trainees, Brussels, 12 February 2018 https://youtu.be/9XJWtFhtWd8
- How I [engineer] Decide Who Gets Banned on OkCupid https://www.thecut.com/2017/02/banned-from-okcupid-sexting-moderation.html
- OkCupid inferences: The 8 Personalities You’ll Meet When Dating in the U.S. https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-8-personalities-youll-meet-when-dating-in-the-u-s-9d87a5a40274#db60
- October 2, 2020, Tinder Is the Latest Social Media Battleground in Thai Protests https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/02/tinder-is-the-latest-social-media-battleground-in-thai-protests/
- July 17, 2017, Match Group appoints global head of privacy in Paris https://iapp.org/news/a/match-group-appoints-global-head-of-privacy-in-paris/
- April 6, 2020, Phone tracking is having a moment, but gay dating app Scruff wants no part of it https://www.protocol.com/scruff-rejects-selling-location-data
- Aug 11, 2020, Tinder slammed over mysterious premium pricing, transparency and data use concerns https://mashable.com/article/tinder-plus-different-prices-age-discrimination/?europe=true
Legal
Tinder Annual report: Tinder on-going accusations. The Irish DPC case, also prices can vary according to users' age https://s22.q4cdn.com/279430125/files/doc_financials/2019/ar/Match-Group-2019-Annual-Report.pdf
My GDPR Complaint Against Tinder https://forum.personaldata.io/t/my-gdpr-complaint-against-tinder/70
Data Protection Commission launches Statutory Inquiry into MTCH Technology Services Limited (Tinder) https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/latest-news/data-protection-commission-launches-statutory-inquiry-mtch-technology
Data leaks and media scandals
Ashley Madison
Ashley Madison Leak No Big Deal? Think Again https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/priority-ashley-madison-leak-no-big-deal-think/
Les résultats de Grindr révélés grâce au scandale Ashley Madison "Grindr a eu des revenus résultant à la fois des abonnements et de la publicité de près de 16 millions de dollars en 2012" https://www.fugues.com/243577-article-les-resultats-de-grindr-reveles-grace-au-scandale-ashley-madison.html
OkCupid:
Here is a mirror for the OKCupid OSF Emil Kirkegaard dataset https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/4jj53i/here_is_a_mirror_for_the_okcupid_osf_emil/
Researchers Caused an Uproar By Publishing Data From 70,000 OkCupid Users https://fortune.com/2016/05/18/okcupid-data-research/
Controversy over OKCupid keynote at CHI 2018 https://www.reddit.com/r/sciences/comments/8edxm3/controversy_over_okcupid_keynote_at_chi_2018/
Grindr:
Données privées : le site de rencontres Grindr mis en cause https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2018/04/03/donnees-privees-le-site-de-rencontres-grindr-mis-en-cause_5279794_4408996.html
Lovoo
LOVOO’s CEO Benjamin Bak resigns https://inside.lovoo.com/en/lovoos-ceo-benjamin-bak-resigns-2/
happn
En détournant l’app Happn, un hacker peut tracer votre chemin en temps réel https://cyberguerre.numerama.com/5827-en-detournant-lapp-happn-un-hacker-peut-tracer-votre-chemin-en-temps-reel.html
References with databases
Rosenfeld, Michael J., Reuben J. Thomas, and Sonia Hausen. 2019 How Couples Meet and Stay Together 2017 fresh sample. [Computer files]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Libraries.
The OKCupid dataset: A very large public dataset of dating site users https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-OKCupid-dataset-A-very-large-public-dataset-of-dating-site-users
- Full paper: https://web.archive.org/web/20200728135539/https://openpsych.net/files/papers/Kirkegaard_2016g.pdf
Surveys
Tinder usage statistics: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tinder-statistics/\#2
Pew Research Center (Feb 2020): The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/the-virtues-and-downsides-of-online-dating/
Swiss Federal Statistical Office (Nov 2019): Families and Generations Survey. Retrieved from https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/fr/home/statistiques/population/enquetes/efg.assetdetail.10467789.html
INED France (2016) https://www.ined.fr/fr/publications/editions/population-et-societes/sites-rencontres-qui-y-trouve-son-conjoint/
Technical references
An Evidence‐based Forensic Taxonomy of Windows Phone Dating Apps https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1556-4029.13820
Privacy Risks in Mobile Dating Apps https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02906
Technical report by mnemonic with the Norwegian consummer assoc showing data trading and GDPR compliance coded: https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/mnemonic-security-test-report-v1.0.pdf
Tinder engineering blog: https://medium.com/tinder-engineering/
TinVec explanation by Tinder's lead engineer: https://youtu.be/j2rfLFYYdfM
Happn by exodus: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.ftw_and_co.happn/latest/
OkCupid engineering website: Evaluating Perceptual Image Hashes at OkCupid https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-okcupid/
How OkCupid organizes its multi-page React app https://tech.okcupid.com/how-okcupid-organizes-its-multi-page-react-app/
Lovoo engineering: dotGo 2016: Go machine learning at large scale https://lovoodotblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/dotgo-2016-go-machine-learning-at-large-scale/
Lovoo github: https://github.com/lovoo
bbuzz 17: Anti-Spam and Machine learning at LOVOO
https://lovoodotblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/bbuzz-17-anti-spam-and-machine-learning-at-lovoo/
Digital methods project "Mapping data ecologies of the dating industry" https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n-p_efBmkK2v1KGCbHyHb_csmR6D7KN8SX3qron9Cn4/edit
Tools
- Tools to sample how many apps are in the Google and Play stores:
"Google Play Store Scraper" is a simple tool to extract the details of individual apps, collect their related apps, retrieve app permissions, and retrieve a list of apps for a given keyword.
"iTunes App Store Scraper"
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase
List of apps with SAR
App | Female | Male | Country |
---|---|---|---|
Adopteunmec | 1 | 0 | CH |
Badoo | 1 | 0 | CH |
Bumble | 1 | 0 | CH |
happn | 1 | 0 | CH |
HER | 1 | 0 | CH |
Once | 1 | 0 | CH |
Parship | 1 | 0 | CH |
PlanetRomeo | 0 | 1 | CH |
Scruff | 0 | 1 | CH |
Tinder | 1 | 1 | CH |