How to protect privacy on online dating sites

Online dating can put a serious risk to user privacyalso given the information provided on the chosen platform and the possibility of being stalked by users who visit these sites only to find new people to annoy.In the following guide, we will show you how to protect your privacy on online dating sites by following simple rules applicable to any online dating site. These rules can also be applied to dating apps or to apps for meeting new people.

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1) Basic rules to protect privacy

The basic rules we can use to protect privacy on dating sites and apps are:

• Personal information and telephone number: Avoid sharing your full name but also your primary address or phone number on a dating site or app. If the site requires a phone number, we use one new SIM for the purpose.
• Payment Information: We avoid giving payment information lightly through dating apps or websites. Many online scams start from dating sites, using fake profiles to recover credit card or bank account access credentials.
• Photo publication: if possible, we avoid using compromising photos as a profile picture or in private chats, using photos that cannot be used against us.

These rules are simple to apply and allow you to increase privacy on online dating sites without having to give up their services.

The most difficult to follow is certainly the one on photographic content given that at a certain point of acquaintance, it becomes very probable to exchange photos in private: we still try to share photos that do not directly reflect our face or photos with clearly visible distinctive signs.

2) Advanced rules for privacy protection

If we particularly care about our privacy we have to go beyond the dating site, because nowadays our information is easily found online often without even realizing it. A person interested in spying on us could retrieve our name from a dating site and search for it on Google or download our profile photo (with our face in the foreground) and start the reverse image search.

This will lead the snitch or stalker to easily recover our personal information on the web using the little information retrieved from the dating site and thus open our Facebook page, our LinkedIn page, or any other social network or site to which we are subscribed.

Since we can’t disappear from the web out of the blue (unless exercising the right to oblivion), it is advisable to follow some advanced rules for privacy protection such as those described below:

• we remove the workplace/school on Facebook or other social networks that require this information;
• we use a different photograph on all social networks (and consequently on dating sites), so as to cancel the reverse image search;
• we do not insert links to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter profiles on the dating site or app, even if the services encourage the provision of this information to increase the number of contactable users;
• We do not use Facebook or Instagram for quick login on dating sites or apps; if we have already logged in this way we can always remove quick login permission;
• we provide location permissions only when strictly necessary, blocking location when we are outside the app;
• we activate the private Facebook profile and the private Instagram profile so that no one can recover personal information;
• we activate private mode on all dating apps that provide this function, so as to be able to guarantee access to our personal profile only to the people we accept.

By adding these rules to the simple ones seen in the previous chapter, we will be able to obtain a good level of privacy on apps or dating sites.

3) Privacy-safe dating sites or apps

Online dating feels like a game until you show up live; It is always better to be safe than sorry and to do this we must remain anonymous online as much as possible. Below we have collected the best sites that, even if it is not possible to obtain 100% privacy, still use more advanced security systems than their competitors:

• Meetic: Popular dating site with advanced blocking systems, anonymous interest searches and lots of safe activities to meet new people.
• LOVOO: a valid alternative to Meetic to meet new people and to chat in complete safety.
• Facebook Dating: mobile app to meet people using the Facebook platform (possibly creating a profile other than the official one).

To learn more, we can read our guide on how to create dating profile on Facebook dating.

Conclusions

Online dating sites and apps can be a great help for single people or people looking for new adventures or new partners, but that doesn’t mean we have to throw away all our online privacy for a date! We follow some simple rules to make secure meetings from the point of view of privacy so as to avoid unpleasant surprises, scams, or deceptive fake profiles.

Always on the same topic we can read our guides on the Best free dating apps to know who we like near us and on the best anonymous chat app with random new people.