Who hasn't used Tinder, Grindr or the recent Happn app? These dating apps typical of our connected years have “revolutionized” seduction for some. But thanks to them, it is not very complicated to locate your location and therefore to follow your movements using several techniques. The dating app thus becomes the best tracking tool ever designed...
Admittedly, the anxieties around geolocation are not new, but with theadvent of all-localized (most messaging apps have this feature by default), the general public loses sight of the amount of information they leave more or less voluntarily with a wide variety of publishers.
If geolocation is part of the heart of the experience of a dating app (a person living in Lille does not want to chat with Amandine from Marseille) in order to target the lonely souls of the surroundings, what we know less is how often the application checks our location.
In practice, the applications quoted largely use a formulation of the type “Brenda is located 4 kilometers from you”. But security researchers (Synack) explain that by overriding certain functions of the flirting fetish app, it becomes possible to guess the near-exact position single (or not). And the method is not so original.
The idea is thus to ask the app three times for location of the chosen one of his heart spied on from different positions. It is thus possible, from a simple triangulation, to obtain the coordinates at the intersection of three circles. The researchers highlight the process used on Grindr, an application intended for gays, but the principle affects all apps of the genre.
A practical example is cited, by cross-checking the different locations of an individual and by trying to find the profile on social networks using the check-ins of the places visited, it becomes possible to associate profiles Tinder/Happn/Grindr to an account like Facebook.
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Thus classic Tinder and Android Wear or the very recent Happn operate in a similar way. If you plan to flirt by these means, you now know what to expect and you are far, very far from seducing in complete anonymity. It is better to keep this little point in mind ;-) .
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