Tinder Dating App Gave away exact Locations of users

According to The Verge’s report, Smartphone dating app Tinder revealed more about its users than they might have wished over a period of several months last year revealing their location to other app users to an accuracy of around 100 feet.

Tinder is an incredibly popular dating app. It presents the user with photographs of strangers and allows them to “like” or “nope” them. When two people “like” each other, a chat box pops up allowing them to talk.

Tinder’s researchers say, lay in the fact it was possible to dig into the data, using fake accounts to triangulate a more accurate position for other app users.

The researchers created a web app, TinderFinder, which could, they claimed, pinpoint any user to within 100 feet within a city. The researchers were keen to point out that they had no intention of making this web-app public.  

“This vulnerability allows any Tinder user to find the exact location of another tinder user with a very high degree of accuracy" 

The app has previously drawn criticism for privacy glitches, and Quartz magazine reported that an earlier breach where location information and Facebook IDs were revealed over the network was played down by company engineers, who claimed that the breach had lasted hours rather than months.

The firm eventually released a statement saying, “On two different occasions, we became aware that our API was returning information that it should not have been. In both occasions, we promptly addressed and fixed the glitch. 



Author Venkatesh Yalagandula Follow us Google + and Facebook and Twitter