Tinder has an estimated 50 million users worldwide and Business Insider reporter James Cook happens to be one of them.
He also happens to be more curious than most.
After Cook filed a “subject access request” under the UK’s Data Protection Act to get a look at the personal information the dating app had collected about him, he received a password-locked, 398-page PDF from Tinder about a month later with the results.
Although the startup had unsurprising pieces of data in its system like Cook’s name, email address and Facebook username, Tinder also had his IP address, pictures he’d uploaded and subsequently deleted, the sexual and age preferences he’d entered and every message he’d ever sent or received on file.
Yes, even the ones he sent after schfifty-five beers at four in the morning.
While the amount of info the service keeps about users is alarming, Cook didn’t reveal if he is a current user or say whether Tinder would’ve scrapped his data if he’d uninstalled the app or deleted his profile.
But at least he had the chance to see it — American users aren’t so lucky, given the shaky data protection laws that currently govern most of the United States: “The FTC Act and most US privacy laws (except the HIPAA and some California laws) do not generally provide data subjects with specific access rights to their data.”
Better write your congressman.
Via Business Insider
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
