Privacy in online dating

Abstract

More people are engaging in the online dating phenomenon nowadays. However, in most cases online dating applications require additional sensitive information such as a user's geographical location or sexual orientation. This situation raises concerns regarding users' privacy in the online dating environment. This article focuses on Tinder which is among the leading location-based real-time dating applications, especially in the Western society. This article analyses whether a user's privacy regarding the use of online dating applications such as Tinder matters or not. Hereby, the article distinguishes between social privacy - privacy related to other individuals - and institutional privacy - privacy related to organizations. This study shows that some users might perceive certain benefits of taking privacy very leniently. Although, collected personal information about users can be utilized to optimize the user experience of a service, users should consider possible future consequences when data is being collected about them. The issues such as little awareness of institutional privacy, unintentional disclosure of information, receiving unwanted, targeted advertising, knowing the users inside out, unsecured data retention, difficulties in accessing or manipulating personal information, and effects on users' existence through data gathering are very important to maintain any individual's privacy in an online environment and show that privacy in online dating applications matters.