Bumble

Bumble says they want to provide a safe dating space, especially for women. They even use artificial intelligence to try and moderate lewd images, body shaming, transphobic, homophobic, and racist comments shared on the site. Good for them! Unfortunately, they have some work to do to protect the privacy and security of all the users on their app. In November 2020, researchers found a security bug in Bumble that exposed the personal information of their nearly 100 millions users. All that really personal info, like political leanings, weight, the type of person a user was looking for, and even location were open to any attacker with a little technical know how. We'll say it again, no matter what a company's privacy policy says, any personal information you share with them online is potentially vulnerable and could be used by bad people for bad purposes. We are glad to see that in 2018, Bumble did stop requiring users to sign in through Facebook. Now users also have the option to sign in with their phone number. Which is good because according to Bumble's privacy policy, if you log into the app using your Facebook account you authorize them to access pretty much everything on Facebook -- friends list, current location, photos, friends you have in common with other people on Bumble, the list goes on. So please remember, when you connect a social media account like Facebook to Bumble, both Facebook and Bumble now potentially collect more information together. That's why we recommend users don't link your dating app to Facebook, use your phone number instead. Because really, you don't need to share all your personal info with Facebook, and then Bumble, and then Bumble may share more with Facebook and then it all gets exposed and soon the world knows where you live, who you think is hot, and how much money you make. That might be a recipe for a good date...it's also potentially a recipe for disaster.