Signing up for an online dating site isn’t always our proudest moment. But many of us have full-time schedules, and meeting people isn’t easy. So the lonely among us try out Zoosk, eHarmony, OkCupid, or one of the many other popular online dating sites. Unfortunately, many such sites are less-than-transparent about what’s happening to your personal data, even after you’ve shuttered the account.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently examined the privacy policies and user agreements for eight dating sites and found that five of them offered up only vague explanations or none at all about what happened to your data after an account was closed. The advocacy group also concluded that most of the sites didn’t observe adequate security practices to protect your information from being intercepted when you use open networks in public places like coffee shops:
The most pressing concern is that information about you may be exposed to future legal requests that might involve a criminal investigation, a divorce case, or even a legal tussle with an insurance company. … Last October, researcher Jonathan Mayer discovered that OkCupid was actually leaking personal data to some of its marketing partners. Information such as age, drug use, drinking frequency, ethnicity, gender, income, relationship status, religion and more was leaked to online advertiser Lotame.
