You Can Now Block Your Exes on Tinder
Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, June 23 2021 @ 11:04 am
Last modified on Wednesday, June 23 2021 @ 11:51 am
Tinder is rolling out a new feature to allow users to block people in their lives from appearing on their match list – whether it’s an ex, a family member, or a work colleague you don’t want mixing with your dating life.
According to Tech Crunch[*1] , the new feature allows users to upload their phone contacts and select which people from their list they don’t want to see on the app. The company says it won’t store the user’s contacts, only the ones they have chosen to block. It should be noted that blocked contacts won’t be notified that they’ve been blocked, so the feature is also intended to be discreet.
People will be allowed to unblock or disconnect their contacts list at any time, according to The Verge.
The benefits of the feature add an additional layer of safety for women - they can select people who have harmed or abused them and block them without those people knowing they’ve been blocked.
Tinder moved ahead with the feature after conducting a survey among its members. The company found that 40 percent of respondents had encountered an ex on the app, and 24 percent encountered a family member. One in ten encountered a professor, making the matching process even more awkward.
When Tinder was testing the feature in India, Korea and Japan, users who opted to use it on average blocked about a dozen people.
Privacy experts however question the feature, as it requires users to upload their whole contact list to select the ones to block, according to some reports. This means that Tinder has access to your entire list of contacts if you opt to use the feature, which could mean even more personal data is at risk of being exposed.
There is also the concern that this feature makes it easier for people to cheat on their spouses, because they have the ability to block all of their friends and family members – essentially everyone who knows them – which means they can use the app more freely in secret.
Still, people are eager to avoid seeing their exes and others they know on dating apps, and have been wanting a feature like this for a while. “We’re rolling out Block Contacts as an additional resource empowering members with peace of mind by helping create a worry-free space for them to spark new connections,” Bernadette Morgan, Group Product Manager, Trust & Safety at Tinder, said in the company’s press release.
The upgrade will be available globally on Monday, June 7th. FOr more on this dating service you can read our review of Tinder.