It’s no secret that the world of dating apps and websites requires collecting vast amounts of data. How could it be otherwise? You’re voluntarily telling these companies your age, where you live, what you’re looking for, and even your income and education.
All of this may just be “personal information” to you or the person you’re trying to match with, but to the companies that own the sites and apps you use, it’s valuable information that they can use to serve ads or sell to third-party data collection companies.
If you value your privacy, or just want to do your due diligence before investing your time or money with a company, it’s worth knowing each app or site’s privacy policy and how it will or won’t protect your information.
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Here is an overview of the data protection policies of the most popular hookup apps.
Credit: AdultFriendFinder
AdultFriendFinder Privacy Policy
AdultFriendFinder is an anomaly among dating apps and websites. The reason is simple. That’s because they allow and even encourage their members to post nude photos and videos. So, as you can imagine, its privacy policy needs to be both transparent and robust.
Thankfully, they are clear about what they should not do with your personal information. “We will not sell, rent, or provide personally identifiable information about you to third parties without your permission.”
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However, please be aware that if you choose to log in to AFF through a third-party authentication site, such as Facebook or Google, those companies will have access to your profile name, email address, and profile photo. You should keep this in mind, especially if you do not want others to know that you are using this site.
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Tinder Privacy Policy
Tinder has one of the strongest privacy policies we’ve come across, but the impression it gives the reader is that it was written by a lawyer to indemnify how Tinder uses your data, rather than to inform you, the user, of your privacy rights.
First, they operate under an “opt-out” rather than an “opt-in” paradigm, so default Tinder accounts are set up to allow a lot of data collection, including “access to certain types of device data such as phone contacts, photos, advertising identifiers, and location services,” in addition to all the data you already voluntarily share with Tinder.
And unlike AFF, which has emphasized Do Not Sell My Data to the point of relying on the use of Caps Lock, Tinder uses slippery legal language that says, “When your data is ‘sold’ or ‘shared’ or used for ‘targeted advertising,’ we provide opt-outs in the ‘Privacy Choices’ link in the footer of our website and in the app’s settings menu.” This sentence begins with a conditional and puts two words with very commonly understood meanings (sell and share) in quotation marks. This is not a good sign.
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If you’re a long-time Tinder user and suddenly become concerned about what the app knows about you, we recommend requesting a copy of your personal data. This site allows you to download it as a ZIP file. This allows you to see exactly what Tinder collects about you and decide for yourself whether you want to continue using the app.
pure privacy policy
What about Pure, a privacy-first app that prides itself on deleting your message history after 24 hours? Their privacy policy is long and comprehensive, but it’s not as precise as you might think.
For example, when Pure discusses the data we share with third parties, we prominently name “service providers” as entities that may receive the data, but we embed that importance in a long list of who exactly qualifies as a service provider. That is, “providers of telecommunications systems, email, databases, hosting, customer communication tools, outsourcing, payments, user authentication, advertising, marketing, analytics, anti-spam services, security, fraud prevention, and trust and safety management.”
Pure acknowledges that these third-party services “may also use your personal data for their own purposes,” but also says, “We do not authorize our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes, and only permit them to process your personal data for their designated purposes and on our instructions.” Pure did not respond to Mashable’s request for comment on what this means.
Also, if you live in California, Pure takes an “opt-out” rather than “opt-in” approach to data collection, so if you plan on using the app, it’s worth taking a hard look at your account settings to make sure you’re not sharing more data with the company than necessary.
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