Online Dating Sites: Seek Love, Find Privacy Violations

PC WORLD - Feb 12 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports online dating sites come with big holes in security that compromise at least the privacy and possibly the financial security of their users. EFF points out six major weak points in the security and practices of online dating sites.

1. Dating profiles remain online for months or years after a member has let a subscription lapse.
2. Second, the authentication on most sites isn't what you'd call bulletproof.
3. Google spiders users' profiles.
4. Even if users use a fake name, they're likely to be identifiable using TinyEye or Google Image Search.
5. Most sites also package their preferences and profile information (theoretically sans identifying data to sell to marketers).
6. There isn't much hope of protecting or recovering users' privacy once they lose it to an online dating service

by Kevin Fogarty
See full article at PC World