Change may be coming to the rapidly growing dating industry as concern mounts about the privacy and safety of all online and mobile users.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., introduced legislation Thursday requiring companies to get customers’ permission before collecting location data off their mobile devices and sharing it with others.
It’s a move that would greatly affect dating websites and apps. As mobile dating proliferates, the focus no longer is just on daters leery of scams or sexual predators but on keeping their locations confidential.
“This stuff is advancing at a faster and faster rate, and we’ve got to try and catch up,” Franken says. “This is about Americans’ right to privacy, and one of the most private things is your location.”
Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Texas have laws that require Internet dating sites to disclose whether they conduct criminal background checks on users and to offer advice on keeping safe.
“I see more regulation about companies stating what kind of information they actually use and more about their specific operation(s),” said analyst Jeremy Edwards, who authored a report on the industry last fall for IBISWorld, a Santa Monica, Calif.–based market research company. “I expect them to have to be more explicit in what they do with their data and what they require of users.”
According to a Pew Research Center report in October, 11 percent of American adults – and 38 percent of those currently “single and looking” for a partner – say they’ve used online dating sites or mobile dating apps.
“We entrust some incredibly sensitive information to online-dating sites,” says Rainey Reitman of the San Francisco, Calif.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for user privacy amid technology development.
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