Analysis of privacy and security exposure in mobile dating applications

Abstract

Millions of people around the globe try to find their other half using Information and Communication Technologies. Although this goal could be partially sought in social networks, specialized applications have been developed for this very purpose. Dating applications and more precisely mobile dating applications are experiencing a continuous growth in the number of registered users worldwide. Thanks to the GPS and other sensors embedded in off-the-shelves mobile devices, dating mobile apps can provide location aware content, not only about the surroundings, but also about nearby users. Even if these applications have millions of registered users, it can hardly be said that they are using the best standards of security and privacy protection. In this work we study some of the major dating applications and we report some of the risks to which their users are exposed to. Our findings indicate that a malicious user could easily obtain significant amounts of fine-grained personal information about users.