Legal

Facebook has been forced to delay the launch of its signature dating service in Europe after failing to provide the European Union data regulator with a required assessment of privacy risks to users. 

According to CNet, The Irish Data Protection Commission raised concerns about Facebook’s privacy practices, and whether the company complied with the European Union’s data protection rules, which are more stringent than those in the U.S. 

Under these new rules, companies considered to be “high risk” in the handling of personal information of users are required to conduct a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) prior to being approved. This includes a written report addressing and outlining potential privacy risks, which the agency said Facebook did not provide, even after the agency sent regulators to Facebook’s Dublin office to gather the required documentation, according to Tech Crunch. 

A committee from the U.S. House of Representatives is investigating popular dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid following a report that found underage users and sex offenders were using the apps.

According to a report from AP, the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy sent separate letters on Thursday January 30th to Bumble, Grindr, The Meet Group, and Match Group (which owns Tinder and OkCupid among others). The letters asked for information on “users’ ages, procedures for verifying ages, and any complaints about assaults, rape or the use of the services by minors,” according to AP.

The subcommittee is also seeking additional information on privacy policies for each of the apps, and what users see when they are asked to review or accept such policies. Recently, dating apps have also come under fire for third-party sharing of personal data, where user information wouldn’t be protected by the dating app’s own privacy policy.

Popular dating apps including Tinder, OkCupid, Happn, and Grindr have come under fire from consumer rights groups and privacy coalitions for sharing personal data of their users with third parties, specifically advertisers.

A study was published this month from the Norwegian Consumer Council that showed 10 apps were collecting sensitive information including a user’s exact location from GPS tracking, sexual orientation, religious and political beliefs, drug use and other information and sharing it with at least 135 different third party companies, according to several reports. Some of those businesses included household names like Google and Facebook, but also lesser-known adtech companies such as OpenX, MoPub, and AppNexus. The study only looked at apps on Android phones, according to NPR.

This type of data collection and sharing violates the European Union’s rules to protect user data online under the General Data Protection Regulation.

In what is becoming an all-too-familiar headline, a security researcher has discovered an online database containing sensitive personal information belonging to hundreds of millions of Facebook users. Names, phone numbers and unique users IDs were exposed in the breach.

Bob Diachenko first came across the data on December 14, ten days after it was created, and reported the leak on Comparitech. The trove was available for anyone to access without a password or any other form of authentication. Based on evidence he discovered, Diachenko believes the stolen data is most likely the result of an illegal scraping operation or Facebook API abuse by criminals based in Vietnam. The information contained in the database puts users at risk of multiple digital hazards, including SMS spam and phishing campaigns.

California state senator Ling Ling Chang

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, is on a mission to make the internet a cleaner, more clothed place. California state senator Ling Ling Chang recently announced that she has partnered with Wolfe Herd on a proposed law that would make it illegal to send unsolicited explicit photos online or via text. This comes nearly eight months after Wolfe Herd backed a similar bill in Texas.

For Chang, the cause hits close to home. She was the recipient of unwanted nude pictures in 2018, when she publicly shared her phone number in an effort to get feedback from her constituents in Diamond Bar, California. Chang claims that 95% of women she has spoken to about the issue have been sent lewd photos they did not ask for.

A revealing report published by ProPublica found that Match Group did not conduct background checks on users of their popular free platforms, including Tinder, Plenty of Fish, and OkCupid, leaving their members vulnerable to sexual assault.

Columbia Journalism Investigations analyzed more than 150 incidents of sexual assault among people who met through dating apps over the last decade, ProPublica reported. Most met their matches through Match Group apps. The researchers discovered that registered sex offenders were using Match Group apps like Tinder and went on dates with women who had no idea, because while Match Group conducts background checks for paid apps like Match, they don’t for their free apps.