When news breaks, you need to understand what matters โ and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today? Some companies track you on dating sites more than others, too.
When the company behind Ghostery, a browser extension that blocks data trackers, studied eight prominent datings sites, including Match and OkCupid, it found that trackers from Facebook and Google were on every single one of them. Many of these trackers help produce analytics and target ads, and those can give companies a good sense of who you are and your romantic interests.
Ghostery found that Match had the greatest number of trackers โ 36 in total โ followed by OkCupid and the 50s-plus dating site Our Time.
Meanwhile, the dating social network Badoo had just nine, including trackers from Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Recode also requested comment from Facebook, but the company had not responded by the time of publication. Tillman says that many of the trackers seen on dating sites are similar to those you might find on an e-commerce platform.
Importantly, many of the trackers that Ghostery found are not from the biggest, most familiar companies. Take a tracker like Advertising. While some might just be looking at the URLs you visit, Tillman says other trackers could potentially pick up more sensitive information, like your gender, sexual orientation, and dating preferences. Ultimately, he says that everyone needs to consider the trade-off between their privacy and the benefit of making this data available to companies.
