Geolocation Sharing on Dating Apps Cause Privacy Concerns
Contributed by: kellyseal on Thursday, April 25 2024 @ 02:43 pm
Last modified on Thursday, April 25 2024 @ 03:00 pm
Dating apps are adding geolocation sharing features to their platforms, but a new investigation found that it’s possible to identify the exact location of a user with stunning accuracy.
According to a new report from Mashable, a study by Checkpoint Research’s Alexey Bukhteyev found that trilateration can be used to find the precise location of a dating app user. Most dating apps use location filters to match people who are relatively close to each other, but trilateration can find the exact position of a user by measuring distances from multiple points, accurate to within a few meters. This technique can also circumvent privacy protections built into these apps.
Bukhteyev found this particularly worrying on LGBTQ+ dating apps, two of which were used in his investigation, according to Mashable[*1] . One of the issues is that in countries that don’t recognize the rights of LGBTQ+ people, local and government officials can locate and target dating app users with trilateration. Recently, officials in the Middle East were targeting people on gay dating apps, asking them to meet for a date, and arresting them when they arrived.
There is also the issue of sexual predators getting access to the locations of users they are targeting. Safety has been a longstanding issue on these platforms, and many companies have added features like photo verification and background checks, but geolocation hacks present yet another issue to solve.
Mashable points out that users share geolocation data with dating platforms in order to match with people, but there are steps they can take to protect themselves. It’s important to look for features that hide location, or at least put up some barriers to trilateration.
Hornet, a gay dating app that was used in this investigation, put out a statement a couple of years ago about privacy features it has on the app to obfuscate users’ locations. It was posted on Checkpoint Research’s website[*2] :
The news media has been full of stories about the vulnerabilities of other gay social apps. On some of our competitors, it is possible for other users to calculate your position. That poses a potential risk to people living in countries where being gay is not okay.
At Hornet, we have always been aware of this potential security risk, and we took steps long ago to protect our users’ locations. Hornet randomly alters your distance as it is displayed in the app. By doing so, it would be impossible for anyone else to find your exact location. We think this is the best compromise between usefulness and security for our users. We also offer our users the ability to deactivate distance altogether on their profile.
Checkpoint researchers noted: “the measures taken by Hornet were insufficient to protect user coordinates, allowing for the determination of user locations with very high accuracy.”
However, at the time of publication of the new findings, Checkpoint said that Hornet had “taken necessary measures to significantly reduce the accuracy of users’ coordinate determination.”