Privacy Risks in Mobile Dating Apps

TL;DR

This paper investigates privacy vulnerabilities in mobile dating apps by analyzing recovered user data, revealing significant risks related to chat messages and location sharing that compromise user privacy.

Contribution

It provides a forensic case study on nine popular dating apps, identifying the types of sensitive data that can be recovered and highlighting privacy concerns.

Findings

Chat messages can be recovered from at least half of the apps.

Details of nearby users can be extracted in some cases.

Location data sharing poses privacy risks.

Abstract

Dating apps for mobile devices, one popular GeoSocial app category, are growing increasingly popular. These apps encourage the sharing of more personal information than conventional social media apps, including continuous location data. However, recent high profile incidents have highlighted the privacy risks inherent in using these apps. In this paper, we present a case study utilizing forensic techniques on nine popular proximity-based dating apps in order to determine the types of data that can be recovered from user devices. We recover a number of data types from these apps that raise concerns about user privacy. For example, we determine that chat messages could be recovered in at least half of the apps examined and, in some cases, the details of any users that had been discovered nearby could also be extracted.