Are You Using Secured Online Dating Apps?
By Prempal Singh
Whilst more and more young people use dating applications for fun or to find the love of their life, new research alerts that these applications are susceptible to hacks, putting you at risk of getting their locations and real names revealed.
According to research revealed that many dating applications do not handle users’ sensitive data with sufficient care.
That’s no reason not to use such services. You simply need to understand the issues and, where possible, reduce the potential risks.
In a survey conducted in collaboration with research firm BUSINESS-ON-BUSINESS International, Kaspersky Lab found that folks turn to online dating for a number of reasons — 48 % do it for fun, 13 % are simply look for sex while some want more meaningful relationships.
Persons share information with others too easily when they are dating online, with 1/4 admitting they discuss their full name openly on their dating account.
The experts studied 9 popular mobile online internet dating applications — Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, Badoo, Mamba, Zoosk, Happn, WeChat, Paktor — and recognized the primary risks for users.
The experts found out that four of the nine applications they investigated allow potential scammers to determine who is concealing behind a nickname centered on data provided by users themselves.
Applying this information, it is possible to find their social media accounts and discover their real names.
“We educated the developers in progress about all the weaknesses detected and by time this text was released some had already recently been fixed while others were slated for correction in the close to future. However, not every developer promised to plot all the flaws, ” the cyber security experts said.
The experts found that eight of the nine applications for Android were ready to provide too much information to cyber criminals.
“If someone wants to find out your whereabouts, six of the nine applications will give a hand. Only OkCupid, Bumble and Badoo keep user location data under lock and key. Almost all of the other applications indicate the distance in your way on the path to the person you’re interested in. Simply by getting around and logging data about the distance between the two of you, it’s simple to determine the exact location of the ‘prey’, ” the researchers informed.