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.
Can it snoop on me?
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?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
Yes
What data does the company collect?
Personal
Full name (required), date of birth (required), photos (optional), gender (required), sexual preference (required), residence/postal code (required), country of residence (required), number of children (required), marital status (required), education level (required), occupation (required), annual income (required), ethnicity (required), as well as descriptions about a user’s personal values and preferences (required), appearance, and any other characteristics that are relevant for us to personality profile and to recommend potential partners. In addition, users' information that have been provided when answering eharmony’s “compatibility quiz." Collects data on ethnicity and allows premium users to filter for it.
Body related
Height (necessary)
Social
eHarmony is not clear on what data they collect from Facebook, as they simply say that they will collect from Facebook the relevant data for your sign-in process but nothing on any other data in addition to your email address and password. Noteworthy, eharmony will not transfer data to social media companies.
How does the company use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?
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?
User-friendly privacy information?
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?
Encryption
Strong password
Password requires 8 characters, letters as well as a number or special character.
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
eharmony takes part in a bug bounty program: https://hackerone.com/eharmony
Privacy policy
Does the product use AI?
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?
What kind of decisions does the AI make about you or for you?
Is the company transparent about how the AI works?
Does the user have control over the AI features?
Dive Deeper
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eHarmony: How machine learning is leading to better and longer-lasting love matchesCMO
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How To Protect Your Privacy On eHarmony.com AdviceDating Site Reviews
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The future of dating report 2018: smart devices will predict if your relationship is on the rockseHarmony
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Match.com learns that encryption alone isn't enoughComputer World
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