Researchers Published (Then Deleted) Data From 70,000 OkCupid Users

A team of Danish researchers caused an uproar last month by publishing data from the online profiles of nearly 70,000 OkCupid users. Information including usernames, political leanings, drug usage, and intimate sexual details were exposed, creating a massive privacy crisis.

The researchers, Emil Kirkegaard and Julius Daugbjerg Bjerrekær, used data scraping software developed by a third contributor, Oliver Nordbjerg, to collect the information. It was used for a study that analyzed members of OkCupid across a variety of factors. The database was posted along with a draft paper on Open Science Framework, a “scholarly commons” that supports open source research and collaboration.

Although this was not a security breach like the heavily-publicized hack of Ashley Madison, it stirred up significant controversy nonetheless.

“Some may object to the ethics of gathering and releasing this data,” the authors wrote in the paper. “However, all the data found in the dataset are or were already publicly available, so releasing this dataset merely presents it in a more useful form.”

Despite their apparent awareness that their actions could spark debate, the researchers held strong after OkCupid users, online commenters, academics, and even the site’s operators criticised them for making user information public. The draft paper has since been deleted from Open Science Framework.

The story raises broader questions about academic research. When is the collecting and broadcasting of personal data justifiable in the name of science? When does it cross ethical and legal lines? Although no real names or photographs of the OkCupid users were released, critics noted that their identities could easily be discerned from the details provided.

And privacy is not the only issue at hand. Kirkegaard admitted in a Twitter post that he had not asked OkCupid for permission to collect or publish the data, a move that many have argued is a breach of research ethics.

“We thought this was an obvious case of public data scraping so that it would not be a legal problem,” Kirkegaard wrote to Fortune.

Others strongly disagreed. Open Source Framework placed the paper behind a password-protected wall and OkCupid filed a copyright claim ordering the site to remove it altogether. Now the journal to which the researchers submitted the paper, Open Differential Psychology, is reviewing the submission.

Despite the backlash and negative media attention, Kirkegaard appears to have few worries about the fate of his work. “If the journal does not take the paper, we will probably publish it elsewhere,” he said. “The paper itself should be fairly uncontroversial as none of the findings are new — in fact, they were explicitly chosen as calibration tests for the dataset.”

To find out more about this service you can read our review of the OkCupid app.