The dating app you’re using to meet the person of your dreams may be sharing your personal data with people you wouldn’t take home to meet your parents.
In late January, Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the consumer policy subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, launched an investigation into the privacy and security of online dating apps. The investigation focused on how the apps share users’ information with third parties and how they screen for underage users and sexual predators.
Krishnamoorthi sent letters asking about privacy and user-screening practices to four companies operating dating apps. They include The Meet Group, which owns MeetMe, GROWLr, and other social apps; Bumble Trading, which owns the Bumble app; New Grindr, which owns the gay dating app Grindr; and Match Group, which owns OkCupid, Match, and Tinder, among others.
Krishnamoorthi, in a statement, said he’s concerned about news reports on underage users and registered sex offenders using dating apps.
“Our concern about the underage use of dating apps is heightened by reports that many popular free dating apps permit registered sex offenders to use them, while the paid versions of these same apps screen out registered sex offenders,” Krishnamoorthi wrote in the letters. “Protection from sexual predators should not be a luxury confined to paying customers.”
Also, Krishnamoorthi raised concerns about dating apps sharing users’ personal information with other companies. He pointed to a January study from the Norwegian Consumer Council, which found that some dating apps share GPS location information, advertising data, and additional information with partner companies.
The study found that OkCupid shares a users’ advertising ID with three third parties, Tinder shares it with five third parties, and Grindr with 18 third parties. The report raises questions about dating apps “inappropriately selling or sharing intensely personal and sensitive information,” Krishnamoorthi said.
The subcommittee noted that on June 17, 2019, Joseph Meili pleaded guilty in Missouri to third-degree child molestation after he was charged with sodomy, statutory rape, and kidnapping an 11-year-old girl he met through a dating app.
The subcommittee’s letter asks the four app companies for several data points, including the number of active users, the cost of the dating service, and the ways the apps verify a user’s age. The letters also ask for policies dealing with sex offenders and other criminals, as well as the apps’ privacy policies.
The letter also asks the companies to disclose all consumer complaints they have received related to the use of their services by people under the age of 18 and all complaints related to rape or sexual assault.
The subcommittee’s investigation isn’t the first controversy related to dating apps in recent months. In September, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Match Group, alleging that the company lured free users to pay for subscriptions with communications from fake love interests.
Neither Match Group nor The Meet Group responded to a request for comments on the subcommittee investigation.
Bumble, however, issued a statement saying the company makes the safety and security of users its top priority. The company looks forward to responding to the subcommittee’s letter and “engaging with them on this important issue,” the statement said.
New Grindr also responded, saying the use of Grindr by minors is illegal and a clear violation of its terms of service. “Any illegal use of our app … is deeply troubling to us,” the company said in a statement.
Grindr is promoting online safety and working on industrywide solutions and transparency reporting, the company said. The company has launched an enhanced in-app reporting tool, and its team follows specific protocols to ban offending accounts, it added.
