eHarmony

eHarmony

Review date: Feb. 12, 2021

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Mozilla says

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People voted: Somewhat creepy

According to their website, every 14 minutes someone finds love on eHarmony. Every 14 minutes, people! This is curious because while you can sign up to eHarmony for free, you can't view pictures or do much more without paying for the premium features. And the shortest subscription you can get with eHarmony is for six months. Maybe someone finds love on eHarmony every 14 minutes, after spending six months looking? Launched in 2000, eHarmony has been around the online dating game for a while and today is targeted more towards serious matchmaking than casual hookups. They have really leaned into the use of artificial intelligence to help people find love, for better or worse. They even analyze your chats and online behavior to send suggestions to help you meet the 'right' people, at the 'right' time. Nothing creepy about that, right?

What could happen if something goes wrong?

eHarmony seems to be one the better mainstream dating app when it comes to privacy and security. Unfortunately, that's not saying a whole lot. eHarmony is targeted at serious people seeking long-term relationships, and it's no small commitment to sign up. Users must complete personality tests and compatibility quizzes and provide a whole lot of detailed personal information when they sign-up, including yearly income, number of children, and ethnicity. All this data and more--things like what types of profiles you spend the most time on and what sorts of photos you upload-- is used by eHarmony and their artificial intelligence algorithms to match you to the people they think will be right for you. Could there be bias in their algorithms keeping you from seeing certain types of people? It seems plausible given they ask people to provide information like ethnicity, religion, and personal values. The good thing is, eHarmony has a pretty decent track record of protecting all the personal information they collect on their users. They did have a couple of data breaches back in 2011 and 2012, but have since seemed to tighten their security. They do use some of this personal data to target you with lots of advertisements and perhaps shares some with third parties for the same. We will also add, eHarmony has one of the worst written privacy policies we've seen. Not only does it have spelling and grammar mistakes, but also at one point refers to the wrong company. Which begs the question, would you trust your sensitive data to a dating app that can't even write their own privacy policy error free? We wouldn't.

  • mobile

Can it snoop on me? information

Camera

Device: N/A

App: Yes

Microphone

Device: N/A

App: Yes

Tracks location

Device: N/A

App: Yes

What can be used to sign up?

What data does the company collect?

How does the company use this data?

eHarmony's Privacy Policy does not explicitly state whether or not it sells user data. The company does process personal data for the purposes of advertising. However, it is unclear whether eHarmony shares personal or aggregated data for advertising and analytics purposes with third parties.

How can you control your data?

Users can request to access, rectify, port and erase their data by emailing [email protected]

What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?

Average

While eHarmony had data breaches in 2011 and 2012, there are no known data breaches in the past two years.

Can this product be used offline?

No

User-friendly privacy information?

No

eHarmony's privacy policy is pretty poorly written. Not only does it have spelling and grammar mistakes, but also at some point refers to 'Parship' rather than 'eharmony'.

Links to privacy information

Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards? information

Yes

Encryption

Yes

Strong password

Yes

Password requires 8 characters, letters as well as a number or special character.

Security updates

Yes

Manages vulnerabilities

Yes

eharmony takes part in a bug bounty program: https://hackerone.com/eharmony

Privacy policy

Yes

Does the product use AI? information

Yes

Researching eHarmony and AI yielded a number of articles, including on the different ways eharmony uses AI to increase matches, analyzing people's chat and online behavior to send suggestions. Also, eHarmony collaborates with research institutes on the intersection of AI and love. This is all very good. There still is a lack of transparency into how eHarmony's AI works and whether it could potentially inject bias into matches.

Is this AI untrustworthy?

Can’t Determine

What kind of decisions does the AI make about you or for you?

Is the company transparent about how the AI works?

No

Does the user have control over the AI features?

Can’t Determine

*privacy not included

Dive Deeper

  • eHarmony: How machine learning is leading to better and longer-lasting love matches
    CMO
  • How To Protect Your Privacy On eHarmony.com Advice
    Dating Site Reviews
  • The future of dating report 2018: smart devices will predict if your relationship is on the rocks
    eHarmony
  • Match.com learns that encryption alone isn't enough
    Computer World

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