Five Reasons You Should Delete Hinge
We know that Facebook and Google profit from our data, but have been slower to realise that dating apps like Hinge – who are loath to disclose how their algorithms work or exactly what they do with our information – do the same thing.
When I selected the app’s “Download My Data” option, it returned everything I hadn't thought twice about handing over: my drug-taking habits, location and dealbreakers in a partner, including religion and ethnicity.
Hinge’s privacy policy itself offers no guarantees: “We do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information will always remain secure.”
This is to help, among other things, “develop and deliver targeted advertising on our services and on websites or applications of third parties, and to analyze and report on advertising you see,” the privacy policy says. Hinge may even “make you visible on other Match Group services”.
Hinge shares your data with a bunch of those “to help us operate and improve our services…[and] assist us with various tasks, including data hosting and maintenance, analytics, customer care, marketing, advertising, payment processing and security operations”.
If the police ask for your information, Hinge may hand it over. “If reasonably necessary,” states the privacy policy, Hinge will comply with authorities “to assist in the prevention or detection of crime…or to protect the safety of any person.”
Then there is what authorities might do with the information. “In the past, when women have come forward to allege that they have been raped or attacked, the courts have used messaging history against them to demonstrate that they were arranging to meet with men and flirting," says O’Reilly.
Even when you delete your account – make sure you don’t just bin the app on your phone – your info may be “kept for [their] legitimate business interests”, whatever that means.