This question is especially for those who have used or are using online dating to meet new people, form relationships, hook up, etc. How do y’all balance the (online) dating scene with your own level of concern regarding privacy/security?
For example, some of these concerns may be that many dating apps are owned by a few companies, dating apps sometimes require linking to sensitive information (real phone number, google accounts, pictures, …), or that they can have vary intrusive trackers, etc
What are the steps you have made to address these concerns, if you have them? Or what are the compromises you have made? How successful are these attempts?
Let me start sharing first (in broad-stroke) about my personal experience. I’m mostly concerned with how my data are handled, transferred between, and used by different services. My concerns usually make using these apps much harder, sometimes even impossible, for example I’m hesitant to share my real phone number to sign up, and I’d prefer to limit my gmail use when possible. But that has also limited my opportunity to meet people online. Though honestly, such interactions have not been meaningful.
I’ve stopped for a while now but thinking of getting back. Just want some perspective on whether it’s worth it, and how I should orient myself with the tradeoffs.
This is probably not what you want to hear but I’m going to say it anyways. I personally think dating apps are a pretty stupid way to meet new people especially a potential partner that you are going to marry one day because the only thing that is making you and them decide whether to swipe left or right is superficial things like looks and whatnot which can very easily be faked with the age of social media. As a result, most of the people you will meet are also very likely just going to be looking to hook up and not seriously date, and they especially won’t put up with you not having social media and whatever the hell.
That being said, if you are going to use dating apps, the best way is to just use like an alias email, use privacy.com for payments, if you are on android use a work profile for the dating app, possibly only use it with a VPN, use a VoIP number, etc. If you are going to seriously try to date though you should probably just use your real name.