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Threaten me softly: A review of potential dating app risks

January 2021
Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3(1):100055

DOI:10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100055

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Authors:

Anh Phan

International University, Cambodia

Kathryn C. Seigfried-Spellar

Purdue University West Lafayette

Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

The University of Texas at San Antonio

The potential abuse of dating applications (apps), including during the current lockdowns due to COVID-19, has resulted in a growing community of research to learn to what extent the impacts of these apps have on the individual's psychological and physiological being, as well as the presumed security of their sensitive information. In this paper, we seek to review the existing literature that encompasses the issues surrounding dating apps. Specifically, we focus on crimes that can occur from the use of dating apps, potential mitigation strategies, the physiological and psychological effects on not only the general population, but also minority groups, and lastly, an assessment on the associated cybersecurity risks and potential digital artifacts of interest in criminal investigations. Although research on dating apps will continue to struggle with the ever-changing technological landscape, it is important to examine best practices and mitigation strategies that dating app developers can utilize to create safer platforms. Finally, we conclude this paper with a number of potential research opportunities.

Existing literature reviews: A comparative summary.

…

Features that can be exploited.

…

Potential mitigation strategies against dating app-facilitated crime.

…

Motivations of using dating apps.

…

Digital artifacts that could potentially be acquired during dating app forensics.

…

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Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Threaten me softly: A review of potential dating app risks

Anh Phan

, Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar

, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 78249, USA

Department of Computer and Information Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Dating apps

Online dating

Mobile forensics

Dating app artifacts

Dating app risks

Dating app forensics

ABSTRACT

The potential abuse of dating applications (apps), including during the current lockdowns due to COVID-19, has

resulted in a growing community of research to learn to what extent the impacts of these apps have on the in-

dividual's psychological and physiological being, as well as the presumed security of their sensitive information.

In this paper, we seek to review the existing literature that encompasses the issues surrounding dating apps.

Speciﬁcally, we focus on crimes that can occur from the use of dating apps, potential mitigation strategies, the

physiological and psychological effects on not only the general population, but also minority groups, and lastly, an

assessment on the associated cybersecurity risks and potential digital artifacts of interest in criminal in-

vestigations. Although research on dating apps will continue to struggle with the ever-changing technological

landscape, it is important to examine best practices and mitigation strategies that dating app developers can

utilize to create safer platforms. Finally, we conclude this paper with a number of potential research opportunities.

1. Introduction

Internet dating websites ﬁrst appeared in the mid-nineties (Brooks,

2011), and in recent times, dating applications (apps) became an

increasing popular way of accessing dating services. The popularity of

dating is partly due to the digitalization of our society and the perva-

siveness of consumer technologies such as smart mobile and wearable

devices (e.g., Android and iOS mobile devices). It has, for example, been

estimated that the number of users will increase steadily in the 30 million

range, with 2019 having 34.9 million dating app users (statista.com).

Dating app usage did not reportedly decrease in the recent COVID-19

lockdowns (businessinsider.co;newshour nation); for example, a recent

media article reported that daily conversations between users of Tinder

and OkCupid have respectively increased by 20% and 30% since March

11, 2020 (fastcompany.com).

Hence, it is not surprising that the research community is interested in

studying dating apps and its usage from different perspectives (Azzahro,

Hidayanto, Maulida, Zhu, &Sandhyaduhita, 2018;Buggs, 2019;Chak-

raborty, 2019;Chan, 2018a, 2018b;Eskridgeet al., 2019;Gavin,

Rees-Evans, &Brosnan, 2019;Zervoulis, Smith, Reed, &Dinos, 2020).

While there are positive aspects associated with the use of such apps

(Buggs, 2019;Lauckner et al., 2019;Mayshak, King, Chandler, &Han-

nah, 2020), there are also potential risks and these risks are not restricted

to cyberspace only. According to Smith et al. (2017),

technology-facilitated intimate partner violence affects one in three

women and one in six men in the course of their lifetime. In another more

recent PEW study, Anderson et al. (Anderson, Vogels, &Turner, 2020)

found that young women were more likely to report negative experiences

with online dating platforms, including harassment and receiving unso-

licited sexually explicit images. In addition, young women were twice

more likely to receive threats of physical violence compared to young

men (Anderson et al., 2020). In some parts of the UK, the number of

crimes involving dating apps doubled from 2015 to 2018

(reﬁnery29.com).

This is partly due to the fact that dating app users are also seeking to

establish physical, face-to-face relationships after they are connected

online (Kallis, 2020). For example, Queiroz et al. (Queiroz, de Sousa,

Brignol, Araújo, &Reis, 2019) found that a ‘high prevalence of HIV was

observed among MSM [men who have sex with men] 50 years of age and older

who use dating apps’. This is partly due to unsafe sexual practices among

the dating app users, including users who are traveling (Boston, 2015;

Duguay, Burgess, &Suzor, 2020;James, Condie, &Lean, 2019;Vor-

objovas-Pinta &Dalla-Fontana, 2019). For example, according to

Sawyer, Smith and Benotsch (2018), dating app users ‘were twice as likely

to have had unprotected sex’.

There have also been a number of reported incidents involving dating

app users in the media. For example, an individual was reportedly

sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for the rape of two women he had

* Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: anh.phan@utsa.edu (A. Phan), kspellar@purdue.edu (K. Seigfried-Spellar), Raymond.choo@fulbrightmail.org (K.-K.R. Choo).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior Reports

journal homepage: www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-in-human-behavior-reports

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100055

Received 31 August 2020; Received in revised form 8 December 2020; Accepted 4 January 2021

Available online xxxx

Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

met on Tinder between 2016 and 2017 (national/victoria). In another

reported incident, a couple allegedly used dating apps to pick a potential

victim for their sexual fantasy, resulting in a female Tinder match getting

strangled and dismembered (people.com). Another incident involved

Grindr, a popular dating app targeted toward “gay, bi, trans, and queer

people”(see grindr.com), where an individual used the app to rob two

men because they were gay (Mich). In 2019, a list of most dangerous apps

for children from Chron was issued after the arrests of 25 men in a child

sex sting, all of whom used one of the apps (Jordan). Among them were

dating apps, such as Bumble, Grindr, and Badoo. Another risk associated

with the use of dating apps is “cyber-ﬂashing”where unsolicited sexually

explicit material is sent via dating apps. In February 2020, it was reported

that

Senator Connie M. Leyva (D-Chino) and Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long

Beach) today introduced the FLASH (Forbid Lewd Activity and Sexual

Harassment) Act, which would establish legal protections for technology

users when they receive unsolicited sexually explicit images and video-

s–also known as ‘cyber ﬂashing’.(Senator leyva introduces ﬂash, 2020)

In addition to the risks faced by app users, there are also potential

risks to the app developer. For example, Wang (Wang et al., 2019) re-

ported that a number of dating platforms were closed down by the Chi-

nese authorities as these platforms provided MSM services.

Some of the risks associated with the use of dating apps also exist with

the use of other online/consumer technologies such as the Internet, social

media, online gaming, and other communication mobile apps (e.g.,

Facebook Messenger and WeChat) (Ayalon &Toch, 2019;Douglass,

Wright, Davis, &Lim, 2018;Gainsbury, Browne, &Rockloff, 2019;Henry

&Powell, 2018;Kochuchakkalackal &Reyes, 2020;Kulyk, Gerber,

Marky, Beckmann, &Volkamer, 2018;Moor &Anderson, 2019;Wu &

Ward, 2019;Zhong, Kebbell, &Webster, 2020). However, these tech-

nologies are generally not designed to facilitate dating (or hook-ups). For

example, as explained by Shield (2019),‘[p]latforms like Grindr also have

an undeniably sexual online culture, and sometimes the lines between social,

logistical, and sexual requests (or offers) are not clear’and it has been

suggested that such apps can be, and have been, utilized to facilitate

prostitution (Albury, Burgess, Light, Race, &Wilken, 2017;Brennan,

2017). In addition, some dating apps allow users to post their HIV status,

and this feature (not available on most other online/consumer technol-

ogies) can be exploited by HIV-negative individuals seeking to have sex

with HIV-positive individuals, known as bug chasing (Díaz, Orlando--

Narv

aez, &Ballester-Arnal, 2019). Dating apps may also facilitate sexual

racism and other malicious activities (Carlson, 2019). Hence, we only

focus on dating apps in this paper.

Speciﬁcally, we perform a search on Google Scholar and existing

databases (e.g., ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, IEEEXplore,

Springerlink, and SAGE Journals) to search for existing literature, using

keywords such as “dating app”AND risks, “dating app”AND crimes,

“dating app”AND “security”,“dating app”AND “safety”, and “dating

app”AND privacy. Then, we review the publications’abstract, intro-

duction, and conclusion, and categorize these publications as directly

related or not directly related to the potential abuse of dating apps and

their mitigation strategies. Publications that are not directly related to

the topic are excluded.

As part of the search, we locate a small number of reviews (or surveys,

as these two terms are used interchangeably) focusing on dating (app)

risks in the literature (see also Table 1). For example, O'Keefe (2005)

reviewed potential risk factors associated with the perpetrators and

victims of dating violence, as well as the effectiveness of existing pre-

vention and intervention programs targeting dating violence. Murphy

(2018) discussed the importance of ﬁnding a balance between privacy

interest associated with dating apps and the need for user protection from

crimes that can derive from them, with the most frequently reported

crimes being ‘rape, stalking, and the grooming and sexual exploitation of

children’. The study also provided an overview of the functionality of

dating apps, the different crimes associated with dating apps, and the

legal issues associated with the data stored on them. Anzani et al.

(Anzani, Di Sarno, &Prunas, 2018) focused on how dating apps could be

used to ﬁnd sexual partners, speciﬁcally through apps that use geo-

location, and they examined the sociodemographics of the typical dating

app user, app use patterns, and proﬁle presentation. More recently in

2020, Ciocca et al. (2020) reviewed 34 articles published between 2016

and 2017 to understand the sexual health and sexual behaviors related to

Tinder use.

We observe that existing reviews and surveys on dating apps gener-

ally do not include a cybersecurity or forensic focus, for example in terms

of what digital artifacts can potentially be recovered from either the

device or the app that could compromise the privacy of the users. This

paper addresses this gap by reviewing cybersecurity risks and digital

artifacts associated with data app usage.

In the next section, we will brieﬂy describe the potential criminal

activities associated with the use of dating apps, as well as mitigation

strategies, based on the analysis of 120 articles identiﬁed in the litera-

ture. Furthermore, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men

will collectively be referred to as MSM, unless otherwise noted based on

the original language used by the authors cited.

2. Potential criminal activities and mitigation strategies

While dating apps offer a range of beneﬁts, there are also associated

risks, such as those described in Table 2. These potential risks/activities

are categorized as technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV), stalk-

ing, revenge pornography, and doxing (Douglass et al., 2018;Freed et al.,

2018;Henry &Powell, 2018;Zhong et al., 2020).

2.1. Potential criminal activities

Dating apps can be, and have been, abused to facilitate TFSV. Ac-

cording to Choi et al. (Choi, Wong, &Fong, 2018), there are two theories

on the association between the Internet (and in our context, dating apps)

and sexual abuse. One is the ease of accessibility to potential victims from

a much larger pool, and consequently, increases the risk ‘of meeting

someone who's sexually coercive’. The other theory is that people engaging

in online interaction will sometimes share personal and sensitive infor-

mation (e.g., personally identiﬁable information; PII) or sexually explicit

images or conversations) due to an immediate trust with people they

meet online.

Why is this so? Yeao and Fung (2018) focused on the sociotemporal

patterns underlying dating apps and discovered that ‘the tempo and

sequence with which we interact with someone not only reﬂect the signiﬁcance

of our relationship with that person but also affect its perceived quality’. The

study's participants saw the pace of a relationship on the app as an

Table 1

Existing literature reviews: A comparative summary.

Law Risks Motivations Crime Function Sociodemographics Psychology Physiology Digital Artifacts

Studies O'Keefe (2005) ✓

Anzani (Anzani et al., 2018)✓✓ ✓

Murphy et al. (Murphy, 2018)✓✓ ✓ ✓

Ciocca et al. (2020) ✓

This paper ✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

attribution of the quality of their connection. The convenience and speed

of dating apps do not stop when users meet a new potential match, but

continues beneath the surface when they decide to “open up”to one

another, even if the meeting time is recent. Such a feature can, however,

be exploited to obtain personal information about one or more users to

facilitate activities, such as cyberstalking or bug chasing. A literature

review of TFSV's effects on adults (Henry &Powell, 2018) distinguished

between three different TFSV behaviors: 1) sexual coercion occurs

through blackmail, bribery, or threats that force a user to take part in

unwanted sexual activity; 2) contact sexual offense refers to the use of

technology to facilitate physical assault (e.g., sexual assault); and 3) the

use of a third-party to assault an app user, based on false identity or

deception.

Stalking is a behavior that may be facilitated by features associated

with dating apps. One example is the popular geolocation feature, which

can be broadly categorized into real-time geolocation (that matches

people in close proximity at the same time) and post-hoc geolocation.

The latter category allows apps to add a temporal overlay as users walk

pass each other repeatedly, thereby showing them as potential matches

(Veel &Thylstrup, 2018). Utilized by many dating apps (e.g., Happn),

this feature would allow a stalker to track thier target in a much more

convenient and accurate way with a greater probability of staying hid-

den. Unlike cyberstalking, physical tracking generally involves a stalker

being in the same physical space as the target in order to learn their daily

routines/routes. Here, the risk of getting caught is higher, but when done

remotely, the culprit is able to do essentially the same task without the

fear of being discovered by the target. Along the same line is a term called

geoslavery, where geolocation is used by a stalker to punish their victim

for ‘location infractions without requiring constant physical surveillance’

(Eterovic-Soric, Choo, Ashman, &Mubarak, 2017). Location infractions

could be the victim visiting anyone deemed a threat by the stalker or

traveling a distance too far from them. Other technological means

include spyware, keyloggers, and even a stalker app (Eterovic-Soric et al.,

2017). Spyware can be used to monitor the victim's computer usage, such

as emails, without their knowledge while keyloggers are able to record

all keystrokes, thus giving the culprit unauthorized access to the in-

dividual's online affairs. The stalker app is a type of spyware for mobile

devices that allows another user to covertly monitor and control the

target's mobile device via geolocation, and also view or block commu-

nication with the target^

€

™s friends and family (Eterovic-Soric et al.,

2017).

One crime not often discussed in the realm of online dating is

nonconsensual pornography. Nonconsensual pornography may be

viewed as a sub-category of cyberharassment (Kamal &Newman, 2016).

Nonconsensual pornography, sometimes referred to as revenge pornog-

raphy, is the distribution of sexually graphic images of individuals

without their consent, often for the purpose of humiliation (Dymock &

van Der Westhuizen, 2019;Hall &Hearn, 2019;Kralji

c&Ünver, 2019;

Wexler, 2018). Sexually explicit or compromising photographs and

videos are often taken and given voluntarily to another individual in the

context of an intimate relationship (also referred to as sexting in the

literature) (Wexler, 2018;Albury &Byron, 2014;Dymock &van Der

Westhuizen, 2019;Franks;Hall &Hearn, 2019;Kralji

c&Ünver, 2019;

Kitchen, 2015;Schreurs, Sumter, &Vandenbosch, 2020;Walrave et al.,

2015).

According to Waldman (Waldman), 10.4 million US internet users

‘have been threatened or victimized’by nonconsensual pornography; they

found that participants saw sharing intimate images on dating apps as

necessary for the following reasons. One is that ‘sharing veriﬁes identity’.

The anonymous nature of dating apps could cause users to be cautious

with those they meet online and therefore require the other to share

images that could validate their personal information/identity. The

second reason is that ‘if users want to see what others look like, they have to

share ﬁrst’. The same way one partner in a relationship opens up about

themselves because the other has already done so, exchanging intimate

images could be seen as an online form of reciprocating and building

trust. The last reason mentioned is that sharing these images allows body

positivity and sexual freedom. The study also gave three reasons as to

why dating apps should be studied as platforms for revenge pornography.

The ﬁrst reason is the wide use of online dating platforms. The second is

that dating apps are ‘designed to promote and facilitate the free disclosure of

intimate images and other personal information’. The app can only provide

users with suitable matches if they are willing to share with it personal,

and sometimes sensitive, information - information that at one point in

time was usually only shared with close friends or family members.

Thirdly, the study recalls that ‘apps remind us that our embodied,

phenomenological social experiences are simultaneously digital and physical’,

meaning that dating apps are created with the ultimate goal of joining

two users, who met online, together in the real world by using features

that follow both the individual's physical and online presence. These

reasons open dating app users to the potential of being victimized by the

very same information they decided to share with that app's community.

Similar ﬁndings have also been echoed in other studies (Fehlbaum &

Bowden, 2020;Riggs &Punyanunt-Carter, 2020;Snaychuk &O'Neill,

2020).

Finally, along with the sexual images, ex-partners often post identi-

fying information, including work address (14 percent), email (26

percent), and the victim's full name (59 percent) (cybercivilrights.org).

This sharing of personal documents is known as doxing. Doxing, also

spelled doxxing, refers to “dropping documents”that disclose a person's

identifying information on the internet to retaliate against and harass the

outed person. Like nonconsensual pornography, doxing is a form of

cyberharassment (Citron, 2014;Douglas, 2016;Freed et al., 2018). Ac-

cording to Douglas (2016), doxing falls under threat categories: dean-

onymization (i.e., victim loses anonymity), targeting (victim loses

obscurity), and delegitimization (i.e., victim loses credibility). For vic-

tims of intimate partner violence, ex-partners may release sexually

explicit photos as a form of delegitimization (Douglas, 2016). In addition,

the release of personally identiﬁable information can expose the victim to

cyberharassment (Blanch &Hsu, 2016).

2.2. Potential mitigation strategies

While there are potential mitigation strategies and solutions, we ﬁrst

must examine the assumptions that app developers make when creating

online programs, and whether those assumptions are a part of the

problem or solution when discussing the potential dangers of dating

apps. For example, Bivens and Hasinoff (2018) examined 807 features of

215 anti-rape apps to examine if and how mobile apps address sexual

violence. If sexual violence can be facilitated by technology, so can the

perceptions of it. 87% of the apps' features were designed for potential

victims, 12% designed for bystanders, and 1% for perpetrators where the

Table 2

Features that can be exploited.

Crimes

Stalking TFSV Revenge Pornography Attempted Murder Fraud

Features Geolocation ✓ ✓

Audiovisual exchange ✓✓ ✓

Chat ✓ ✓

Proﬁle Presentation ✓

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

features either targeted incident intervention or education and aware-

ness. For the potential victims, 80% of the features were made ‘to be used

during a speciﬁc incident’–alerting a list of contacts about the incident or

monitoring the user with GPS to alert contacts if they remained idle too

long or veered off a suggested route. While these elements might sound

reassuring, they would most likely be ineffective in a real attack because

they do not address the various forms of coercion a perpetrator would

probably use nor are they speciﬁc to the various circumstances a po-

tential victim may ﬁnd themselves in. Bivens and Hasinoff argued that

the prominence of Incident Intervention features and ‘victim-centric ap-

proaches’in anti-rape apps do not challenge rape myths, but rather

reinforce the two most common ones, namely: sexual violence is pri-

marily committed by strangers and ‘potential victims are responsible for

preventing sexual violence through personal vigilance and risk reduction’.

Thus, the support the apps provide do not reduce our society's tendency

toward victim-blaming. This is similar to the study by Debnam and

Kumodzi (2019) on adolescents' viewpoints on a safety planning app

designed to address sexual violence (the authors focused on adolescents

due to the issue of teen dating violence). The teenage participants found

that the app was designed to address common perceptions of sexual

abuse –gender exclusiveness and generalized safety dilemmas. However,

the app's language implied that females were always the victims and

seemed to assume only heterosexual relationships. As for the safety di-

lemmas, the participants noted that the app poorly addressed psycho-

logical abuse –a form of abuse that they believed was ‘strongly present in

their relationships’.

Other potential solutions to facilitate the design of safety apps and

staying safe when dating online are summarized in Table 3.InDebnam

and Kumodzi (2019), youth proposed installing quicker ways in safety

apps to help a friend in a dangerous situation, such as having a button

that when clicked would provide immediate service or instructions when

in an emergency. Bivens and Hasinoff (2018) also explored various so-

lutions for both the victim and perpetrator. As discussed earlier, the

common myths of sexual assault cause app developers to create programs

that do not necessarily aid in ﬁghting against a rape culture in which

victim-blaming occurs. It was also explained that new apps can ‘facilitate

collective forms of resistance to rape culture by coordinating and collecting

testimonies of personal experiences’, such as making anonymous reports

with the option to pursue the case only if another person reports the same

assailant (Bivens &Hasinoff, 2018). However, apps seem to lack edu-

cation on effective self-defense techniques, emotional and physical

self-defense training, or other resources that could provide better pro-

tection against perpetrators. The study also stated that ‘it is clear that an

effective anti-rape app would need to be part of a broader rape prevention

program’(Bivens &Hasinoff, 2018). The most successful programs pro-

vided, over a long period of time beginning in teenage years, education

that aimed to break gender stereotypes and relationships and focused on

empathy for the victim, rather than placing blame. Aware that potential

perpetrators ‘would likely not seek out an app on their own’, Bivens and

Hasinoff suggested ‘the use of such an educational app [to] be required in

schools or workplaces …and as part of a comprehensive evidence-based sexual

violence prevention program’(Bivens &Hasinoff, 2018).

What all of these potential solutions have in common is their goal of

breaking the common myths associated with sexual assault. As mobile

apps are so ubiquitous in today's society, the potential change these so-

lutions could have may be able to impact the way society perceives sexual

violence, and thus help so many individuals move past the common

myths that exist in today's safety apps. However, it is also not realistic to

expect app developers to be responsible in mitigating all risks due to the

use of dating apps. For example, a background check on an app user can

only reveal previous criminal history but not predict future offending.

3. Physiology

One aspect of dating apps' risks that literature reviews lack is the

possible effects dating apps have on the individual's physiology. This

section will focus on the association of dating app use with sexual

behavior and unhealthy image perception, speciﬁcally eating disorders.

Due to the geosocial-networking (GSN) feature of many dating apps,

meeting a potential match face-to-face (FTF) has reached a new level of

convenience and speed that may be seen by many as lucrative. However,

because of this convenience, some users may be more motivated to

engage in risky sexual behaviors, such as sex without protection or with

the use of drugs. Hahn et al. (2018) conducted two experiments with the

goal of highlighting “the importance of understanding GSN app use in the

spread”of risky sexual behaviors “among emerging adults.”However,

the study found no statistical difference between users and non-users.

However, Choi et al. (2016) explored the association between dating

app use and risky sexual behaviors among college students and found

that the use of dating apps was associated with having more sexual

partners, more unprotected intercourse, increased likelihood of incon-

sistent condom use, and not using a condom in their most recent sexual

encounter. Choi et al. also believe that individuals who are sexually

active may be more likely to use dating apps because of their convenience

and accessible nature. Again, this research suggests dating apps may

facilitate risky sexual behaviors.

Before discussing the relationship between dating apps and eating

disorders, it is important to understand the underlying issue: image

perception. This stems from the Objectiﬁcation Theory, which tries to

explain the pervasive tendency to equate humans (in particular, women,

but this section focuses on both genders) with their bodies (Calogero,

2012). Sexual objectiﬁcation involves the fragmentation of a person into

a collection of sexual parts, thus stripping them of a personality so that

they exist merely as a body. To objectify oneself (called

self-objectiﬁcation) means to adopt a third-person perception instead of a

ﬁrst-person one, thus placing greater value on how one appears to others

instead of how one feels. This creates “an objectiﬁed body”that is

“malleable, measurable, and controllable.”Research suggests dating app

users prioritize physical appearance to any other feature of a person's

proﬁle (Shimokobe and Mirandaa). This emphasis on evaluation by

physical appearance led Coor et al. (2016) to examine the association

between dating apps and disordered eating. A large body of evidence

indicates self-objectiﬁcation directly predicts more disordered eating

behaviors (Calogero, 2012). Coor et al. expected to ﬁnd that dating app

users would demonstrate elevated rates of unhealthy weight control

behavior (UWCB) compared to non-users; six UWCBs were identiﬁed

including fasting, diet pill use, and anabolic steroid use among the male

and female participants. Laxative use was 11.7% while 25% reported

vomiting for weight control. Dating app users had signiﬁcantly higher

odds of UWCBs compared to non-users, with female users having

2.3–26.9 times the chance of engaging in all six behaviors and male users

having 3.2–14.6 times the chance. This study highlighted an

under-researched issue associated with the use of dating apps. The

attention paid to physical appearance on dating apps may cause users to

feel pressured by the probability of success –number of matches,

exchanged messages. To increase that probability, they may be motivated

to take potentially harmful actions in order to ﬁt into their belief of

accepted physical beauty and thus be accepted by those online.

Table 3

Potential mitigation strategies against dating app-facilitated crime.

Strategy Effective Against

Install app features with immediate

help

Unsuspecting emergencies

Collect testimonies of personal

experiences

Victim-blaming in rape culture

Training in emotional þphysical

self-defense

Perpetrators that try to cause emotional þ

physical harm

Educational programs over a long

time period

Breaking stereotypes in gender þ

relationships

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

4. Psychology

Majority of the research on dating apps explored the psychological

impact and reasons why people seek dating online. This section discusses

the factors for using dating apps, the dangers, and the unique effect

dating apps have on minority groups.

4.1. Contributing factors

Table 4 summarizes ﬁve key motivations of using dating apps.

For many users, the impact of dating apps resides psychologically by

playing a role in shaping how the individual perceives oneself. Solis and

Wong (2019) investigated the motivations behind dating app use and

found that the most popular reason was fun and ease of connectivity.

Many enjoyed the app's ability to allow easy communication with a large,

diverse population; this was also found by Chin et al. (2019) where the

reason for dating app use with the highest frequency was to “meet

others.”Three other popular reasons were self-esteem, sociability, and

sexuality. Again, because of the Internet's capability of vast communi-

cation, users found that dating apps provided another avenue to meet

new people with whom friendships could be made, in addition to or

instead of, meeting people for romantic purposes. Self-esteem could be

taken in two ways. One perception is that individuals with low

self-esteem may wish to use a dating app due to the possibility that their

proﬁle will receive positive reactions (i.e., many matches, many mes-

sages and likes). For those who fear rejection and/or have trouble

meeting people physically, dating apps provide a unique mode of

communication in that they are given the opportunity to become familiar

with strangers without having to meet them in person, thus taking away

the pressure they may feel in physical social situations. This could also be

seen as dating anxiety where people with high dating anxiety may be

more likely to use dating apps because of the ease of communication

(Sumter &Vandenbosch, 2019). In Chin et al. (2019), results showed

people who were more anxious were more likely to use dating apps.

Despite this common viewpoint, however, the same study's survey

showed those who were low in dating anxiety had a higher likelihood of

using dating apps. In addition, those with high dating anxiety in the

ofﬂine world continued to have high dating anxiety when using the on-

line platform. Future researchers should be aware of these contradicting

ideas when investigating the impact self-esteem may have on a person's

dating preferences online.

The motivation of sexuality has two perceptions –to meet someone of

the same sexual orientation or to gratify one's sexual desires using the

most convenient tool. The Solis and Wong study (Solis &Wong, 2019)

found that women were more motivated by self-esteem and sociability to

use dating apps while men were more motivated by sexuality. The latter

concurs with Sevi et al.‘s (2018) ﬁnding that men's use of the popular

dating app, Tinder, for casual sex was positively correlated with socio-

sexuality –a person's willingness to take part in uncommitted sexual

activity.

Another motivation to consider because of its psychological inheri-

tance is attachment orientation, as examined by Chin et al. (2019).

Attachment orientation has two dimensions –anxiety and avoidance.

Those with higher attachment anxiety enjoy physical intimacy while

having concerns about abandonment; those with high attachment

avoidance dislike physical intimacy while those low in both dimensions

are typically securely attached and feel comfortable in a relationship.

Thus, “anxious and avoidant attachments emerged as signiﬁcant pre-

dictors of reports of reasons to use dating apps,”where “people who

reported higher anxious attachment reported greater likelihood of dating

app use,”and the higher the person's avoidant attachment, the less likely

they were to use dating apps (Chin et al., 2019). The potential reasons for

the former ﬁnding have already been discussed. As for the latter, the

reason lies in the theory that those with avoidant attachment tend to stay

emotionally distant from others, including intimacy. Thus, it is possible

that they have less motivation to use dating apps. It should be noted,

however, that this study was correlational and not causal. While it is

plausible for an individual to use/not use a dating app based on a certain

attachment orientation, it is also plausible for one's attachment orienta-

tion to shift because of dating app use. Nevertheless, the impact that

attachment orientation on dating app use should be further examined by

future research.

4.2. Dangers

Dating apps can also be used as a platform to engage in behaviors that

would be considered as potentially dangerous, psychologically, by

others. Table 5 presents some potential risks associated with dating apps

and the studies that highlighted them. Two potential dangers –deception

and geolocation –will now be explored.

Due to the possibility of anonymity in the online world, many dating

app users could ﬁnd themselves communicating with a fabricated proﬁle.

Even though many dating apps use links to other social media “as a

warranting cue to hamper deception,”(Murphy, 2018) people can still

get away with hiding behind a fabricated online persona. Doing so causes

potential dangers for the victims to arise, such as coaxing them into

sharing sensitive information or agreeing to meet FTF to discover too late

that they are someone completely different. Duncan and March (2019)

investigated whether gender, sadism, and the Dark Triad –Psychopathy

(empathy deﬁcits), Machiavellianism (cunning behavior to reach one's

own goals), and Narcissism (exaggerated self-importance) –could predict

antisocial behaviors, like deception, on a dating app known as Tinder.

They believed that gender and the Dark Traid would predict signiﬁcant

variance in the perpetration of antisocial online behaviors. Results sug-

gested that while gender was not a signiﬁcant predictor of antisocial use

(which goes against prior research that showed men were more likely to

have antisocial behaviors; this could be due to the survey having an

uneven balance of females and males), the four different psychological

traits were all signiﬁcantly positive predictors of antisocial-general use.

The anonymity of the Internet may motivate people to participate in

antisocial behaviors by existing through any kind of online persona they

desire, thus creating a separation between the online persona and one's

true self. Whether this type of separation exists could be a notable topic to

Table 4

Motivations of using dating apps.

Motivations Deﬁnition Studies

Fun &Ease of

Connectivity

To easily explore proﬁles &

meet new people

(Anzani et al., 2018;Chin,

Edelstein, &Vernon, 2019;

Rosenfeld, Thomas, &Hausen,

2019;Veel &Thylstrup, 2018;

Yeo &Fung, 2018)

Eating

Disorders

Unhealthy eating behaviors

to control online image

perception

(Calogero, 2012;Shimokobe and

Mirandab)

Sexuality To ﬁll sexual gratiﬁcation or

to meet others of the same

sexual orientation

(Blackwell, Birnholtz, &Abbott,

2015;Chan, 2018a, 2018b;Choi

et al., 2016;Ferris &Duguay,

2019;Hahn et al., 2018;Sawyer

et al., 2018;Sevi, Aral, &

Eskenazi, 2018;Solis &Wong,

2019;Sumter &Vandenbosch,

2019;Waldman;Wu &Ward,

2018)

Self-esteem To feel a greater sense of

conﬁdence from the

validation of others

(Anzani et al., 2018;Hallam,

Walrave, &Backer, 2018;

Shimokobe and Mirandab)

Love To ﬁnd a committed

relationship

(Anzani et al., 2018;Chan,

2018a, 2018b;Sawyer et al.,

2018;Solis &Wong, 2019)

Social To ﬁnd social relationships/

friendships

(Franco, 2019, p. 91; Anzani

et al., 2018;Bivens &Hoque,

2018;Chan, 2018a, 2018b;Chin

et al., 2019;Lauckner et al.,

2019;Sawyer et al., 2018)

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

explore as individuals' online presences become more prominent in the

modern age. Continuing in the world of deception, Markowitz and

Hancock (2018) evaluated the frequency of this act in exchanged mes-

sages between dating app users; speciﬁcally, when lies occurred during

the three important periods in an online dating relationship: 1) the

proﬁle stage where users try to give their best presentation through their

proﬁle; 2) the matching stage that shows which users are compatible

with whom; and, 2) the discovery stage when two matches have estab-

lished mutual interest and begin communicating. Deception does not

necessarily stop after the user creates their proﬁle, but may continue into

the communicating process in order to “fulﬁll certain impression man-

agement goals.”The authors categorized messages in three ways,

namely: self-presentation lies, butler lies (messages for availability

management), and other. One key ﬁnding was that nearly two-thirds of

deceptive messages involved self-presentation and butler lies, where the

latter took up 30%. The less a user liked their partner, the more likely

they were to give a butler lie to appear unavailable. As for

self-presentation lies, messages conﬁrmed that users often lied to amplify

their attractiveness. Another ﬁnding was that more lies were created at

the start of the interaction than the end, but the magnitude of lies

remained similar for both periods. Despite these deceptive behaviors that

evidently exist in dating app communications, participants of another

study (Lauckner et al., 2019) felt that they were simply a part of the

dating app experience. This could be interpreted as a growing mindset

that inappropriate behaviors like deception should be expected and/or

accepted in the world of online dating. Such an interpretation should not

be ignored by future research.

The second danger to explore revolves around geolocation, a feature

already discussed as a facilitator for crimes such as stalking. The

following discussion will elaborate assess geolocation on the basis of

psychology. One study (Veel &Thylstrup, 2018) discussed geolocation

from a cultural-theoretical viewpoint to help understand its ﬂaws in the

world of dating apps. It looked to German sociologist, George Simmel,

who saw the stranger as someone who may be a member of a group in

spatial, but not social, terms. This “familiar stranger,”as built upon by

Stanley Milgram, is a person whom one recognizes regularly –the person

seen on the train every morning or a classmate in a weekly yoga session.

When an encounter occurs outside of that regular environment, the in-

dividuals who are “familiar strangers”are more likely to interact with

one another instead of with complete strangers because their regular

spatial encounters are seen as something shared. This can be applied to

dating apps that match users based on their physical proximity because it

contains the theory of the “familiar stranger”–in that a person within

one's temporal space will have some common ground and therefore be a

better match than someone outside of it. While this can give users a

“reassuring sense of urgency”since it provides opportunities for romantic

endeavors within physical proximity, there still exists a ﬁne line between

the familiar stranger and someone who evolves into a stalker. Because

stalking involves repeating ordinary routine behavior that then turns

menacing toward the target, geolocation is a resembling attribute due to

its spatio-temporal conﬁguration that emphasizes repetition as a

matching criterion. The trouble then lies in the concept of the familiar

stranger. If perceived as a potential romantic partner with whom there is

a common ground, a prospective stalker may see no restriction in their

attempt to become intimate with and gain knowledge about the target;

the repetitive nature geolocation can possess in dating apps may cause

that person to view the other as someone they must interact with by

whatever means possible, even if those means evolve into dangerous or

inappropriate endeavors.

4.3. Minority groups

As previously discussed, understanding the effect of dating apps on

minority groups is an understudied area. For example, the experiences of

minority groups with regard to online dating may be unique to their

characteristic(s), whether that be sexual orientation, lifestyle, or

ethnicity. Even though one may think that the rise of online dating would

offer the beneﬁt of being able to expand one's knowledge about various

types of individuals and lifestyles, users may still have negative experi-

ences that reﬂect common stereotypes. Three groups will now be dis-

cussed to further explain those experiences –users in rural communities,

women, and those in the LGBTQ þcommunity.

4.3.1. Rural communities

There is little research on dating app experiences within rural com-

munities despite the constant expansion of technologies. This is, perhaps,

due to the fact that most dating apps use location as a key feature to

perform matching and the population of dating app users in rural areas is

likely to be (signiﬁcantly) lower. A follow-up question would then be

whether or not online dating experiences would differ between those

living in and out of urban areas, as well as those from a different culture

or ethnicity. For example, Carlson (2019) looked at the experiences of

Indigenous Australians. It was found that Indigenous people struggle

between the public and private self due to expectations from family,

community, and the workplace, which at times results in strategic out-

ness –a process where people assess certain social situations before

deciding what to disclose. For example, a gay Aboriginal man said he had

not come out as gay on Facebook, but regularly used Grindr to meet other

gay men. He reportedly saw Facebook as his public self and Grindr as his

private self.

Other gay Indigenous men in the study revealed that they have been

subject to racism on dating apps, speciﬁcally sexual racism where sexual

preference is based on racial exclusion. This could include proﬁles

explicitly saying which ethnicity they did not desire or being sent racist

messages simply based on proﬁles (Lauckner et al., 2019). While chatting

Table 5

Risks associated with the use of dating apps.

Risks Deﬁnition Studies

Lies &

Deception

Causing someone to accept a

false claim as the truth to reach

a certain goal with them

(Anzani et al., 2018;Ferris &

Duguay, 2019;Henry &Powell,

2018;Hu et al., 2020;Lauckner

et al., 2019;Markowitz &

Hancock, 2018;Murphy, 2018;

Shetty, Grispos, &Choo, 2020)

Sexual Risk Unsafe sexual behaviors (e.g.,

bug chasing)

(Anzani et al., 2018;Choi et al.,

2016;Coor et al., 2016;Duncan

&March 2019;Hahn et al.,

2018;Sawyer et al., 2018;YSet

al, 2019)

Dangerous

People

Those who cause physical &

psychological harm to others

purposefully

(Bivens &Hasinoff, 2018;

Carlson, 2019;Choi et al., 2018;

Debnam &Kumodzi, 2019;

Eterovic-Soric et al., 2017;

Gillett, 2018;Henry &Powell,

2018;Lauckner et al., 2019;

Murphy, 2018;Scannell, 2019;

Shetty et al., 2020;Stoicescu,

Matei, &Rughinis, 2019;Veel &

Thylstrup, 2018)

Cyber Allowing one's personal

information to potentially be

accessed without permission

(Atkinson, Mitchell, Rio, &

Matich, 2018;Cahyani, Choo,

Ab Rahman, &Ashman, 2019;

Choo, Farnden, &Martini, 2015;

Kim, Kim, Lee, Kim, &Kim,

2018;Mata, Beebe, &Choo,

2018;Murphy, 2018;Shetty

et al., 2020;Waldman)

Harassment Repeatedly attacking another

person to make them feel

aggressive pressure or

intimidation

(Franco, 2019, p. 91; Bivens &

Hasinoff, 2018;Bivens &

Hoque, 2018;Carlson, 2019;

Chan, 2018a, 2018b;Duncan &

March 2019;Gillett, 2018;

Henry &Powell, 2018;

Lauckner et al., 2019;Murphy,

2018;Scannell, 2019;

Waldman)

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

with a potential partner, one participant was sent a racial comment about

Aboriginal people and after taking offense, “was then sent a barrage of

texts similar”to the ﬁrst. Similar to these participants, eight Aboriginal

women in the study revealed that they received numerous Tinder mes-

sages with “sinister undertones”for sexual violence once they disclosed

themselves as Aboriginal.

Having to maintain one's online proﬁle in order to avoid possible

penalties from the other romantic party is something Indigenous people

are familiar with, coming from remote areas, having to navigate unfa-

miliar cultural landscapes while keeping aware of the perceptions of both

sides.

4.3.2. Women

A popular dating app known as the “ﬁrst feminist dating app,”

Bumble, was studied (Bivens &Hoque, 2018) to analyze the intersections

between gender, sex, and sexuality on dating apps. It was noted that in

2015, there were one million users on the app and that by 2017, it had

increased to 18 million. The MeToo movement was mentioned as a

possible trigger for this rise in female users “who were tired of being

spammed with annoying messages”–females who wanted to experience

something other than the traditional heterosexual romantic occurrences.

However, what Bivens and Hoque (2018) found was that the logic of

Bumble was perhaps more restricting than what the creators intended –a

dating app that allowed women to take the lead in communicating with

potential partners. Its logic “relies on policing the male body as if it al-

ways exists in an intrinsically brusque and brash state of being,”only able

to act in a savage form of masculinity. This assumes that a male seeking

potential partners will by nature act “uncivil”and will be unable to

behave in any other way, thus creating a clearly narrow “construction of

masculinity.”In the same breath, the female user is seen as naturally

more genteel. The issue with this construction is that despite the app's

goal of breaking down the gender stereotypes often seen in the dating

world, they are still evident in the way Bumble perceives each gender's

natural behavior. A female user stated that after sending the ﬁrst message

to a male, the control was taken right back by him.

What Bumble and other “feminist”dating apps are trying to accom-

plish lies in the perspective of techno feminism, which sees technology as

something that co-evolves with gender relations. Chan (2018a, 2018b)

looked at this perspective through the experiences of heterosexual

women in China. The signiﬁcance in dating app use for the interviewed

women included the following. Because they felt the education system in

China provided little for its citizens to think about intimacy or sexuality,

dating apps gave an environment where they could do further explora-

tion and come to their own conclusion about the relationship between

sex and love. Dating apps also made it easier to expand their relationship

pool, a feature that has been explained before. The apps also provided

women with new social avenues. Many saw it as a third place between

home and the workplace where social interactions could occur; many

informants even felt that their social lives were on dating apps. Because

they have people from all walks of life, they also felt that they could learn

and explore new experiences. Despite these beneﬁts, there is still stigma

against using a dating app in China that could even hurt a person's

reputation. Some informants had ﬁrst-hand negative judgements for

using dating apps and to earn approval, would have to prove their

innocence by doing something like deleting the app in front of the other

person. Another challenge the informants experienced was handling

sexual harassment. All of them reported being asked for hook-ups, which

reﬂects the public impression that dating apps are mainly used for sexual

meetings. To combat these sometimes unwanted efforts, the informants

would either explicitly say in their proﬁles that they did not desire

hookups or report harassment within the app. One participant felt she

had more power as a female dating app user than as an employee because

of her ability to report harassment and then see the proﬁle get deleted.

Gillett (2018) states that “little is known to date about women's

everyday lived experiences of intimate intrusions facilitated through

dating apps.”Where there is the issue of “gendered cyberhate”on various

Internet platforms, there is also the potential for female users on dating

apps to experience hostile interactions and/or online harassment, such as

inappropriate images, offensive messages or threats. Women in another

study reported making changes to their lives because of the aggressive

messages received (Franco, 2019, p. 91). Occurrences like this show that

dating experiences in the real and online world have continued to be

similar in their negativity where men “simply feel more comfortable with

making women less comfortable”(Franco, 2019, p. 91). Currently, it is

unclear if women's experiences of intimate intrusions through dating

apps are more similar to dating abuse or sexual harassment and it may be

the case that the two behaviors overlap (Gillett, 2018). What this high-

lights is the still-present ambiguity in the different relationships when it

comes to the mistreatment of females; many do not even report sexual

harassment as the commonality of it makes them think it is part of the

everyday experience. Because of the lack of insight on women's experi-

ences with intimate intrusions through dating apps, there are some

questions to consider in order to move forward: how do women under-

stand intimate intrusions and what do they do in response? What is the

impact of intimate intrusions and how do online platforms address the

abuse that can take place?

4.3.3. LGBTQþ

There is a growing number of dating apps that have speciﬁc de-

mographics in mind, one of them being the LGBTQ þcommunity. It was

found that, in a pool of 541 respondents for one study, there were more

non-heterosexual dating app users than their counterparts (Sumter &

Vandenbosch, 2019). In Texas alone in 2019, there's a LGBTQ þpopu-

lation estimate of 500,000 to 1.4 million with neighboring states con-

taining 50,000 to 199,000 (lgbtmap.org). As the community grows larger

and meets more attention in society, so does the amount of research

interested in how individuals of this group interact and are affected by

dating apps. Interviewees who used Grindr (Blackwell et al., 2015)

viewed the platform as a virtual place where they were co-situated with

similar people, “like having a gay bar in my pocket.”There are two

reasons for this. One is that in cities where there are few or no physical

spaces for gay, trans, and bisexual men to meet, apps like Grindr can

provide those spaces and allow users to interact as similarly as they

would if in a physical space. The other reason lies in the possibility that

an individual who has not “come out”yet publicly would still be able to

express their sexuality on the app. This reason is one more unique to

LGBTQ-targeted apps than those that do not necessarily target this de-

mographic. In the States, 46% of LGBTQ þindividuals remain closeted in

the workplace for reasons such as not wanting to be stereotyped or

worrying if doing so would cause the loss of relationships with

co-workers (Paul). 53% of LGBTQ þemployees have reported hearing

jokes made about their community when working. It is evident that there

are still spaces where LGBTQ þpeople either feel uncomfortable to

reveal their identity or have to gauge whether it is LGBT-friendly ﬁrst.

Again, apps like Grindr give individuals opportunities to explore their

sexuality and interact with others similar to them while still allowing

them to keep it private in their physical environments; being able to meet

“someone who is also gay, also about the same age …also looking for the

same thing you're looking for, just seems less likely to hurt you than

someone else who does not share the same personal narrative”

(Waldman).

One aspect that many users of Grindr (can be applicable to other

LGBTQ-targeted apps too) have discussed is the prioritization/emphasis

on the physicality of users. Like other dating apps, proﬁle pictures are the

ﬁrst things seen by users searching for matches. Depending on what is

shown in those pictures, such as one's face versus a certain body part,

different cues on the user's intentions will be interpreted. For example,

one interviewee (Blackwell et al., 2015) said that in order to convey that

he was looking for more social interactions than casual sex, his proﬁle

picture contained his face instead of a torso “because that may be taken

as looking for sex.”The opposite was also evident as another individual,

through his proﬁle pictures, made it explicit that he was on the app for

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

sexual encounters. The emphasis on how a person looks physically in

dating apps could lead to the issue of racism. Waldman (Waldman) saw

that multiple users have seen proﬁles stating ethnicities that were not

desired and that even after reporting them, would not see those proﬁles

get taken down. A platform that does not enforce ways to give users a

safer environment and/or ignore those who do not feel safe potentially

allows for other offensive behaviors to arise. This could be seen as a

particularly signiﬁcant issue for the LGBTQ þcommunity since, as

mentioned earlier, many join LGBTQ-targeted apps to meet people with

whom they can relate and thus feel more comfortable with.

Another issue deriving from this emphasis on physicality is noncon-

sensual or revenge pornography. 15% of LGB users have been affected by

this act compared to the 4% of general US internet users (Waldman).

With this in mind, is it possible that MSM dating app users are more

frequently threatened with or victimized by non-consensual image

sharing than the general population? Waldman (Waldman) discovered

that 14.5% of the 917 participants reported someone on a dating app had

made public their intimate images without consent and that more than

68% cared if their images were shared with others. There was a senti-

ment made by many that someone sharing photos of his attractive

physique would not have a problem if those photos spread beyond his

knowledge. 82.6% agreed that sharing photos is a necessary part of the

process of meeting people on apps like Grindr. The “lax approach”–as

said by one participant –when it comes to sharing intimate images in the

gay community suggests “that some gay men …on dating apps do not

understand the privacy invasions inherent in sharing graphic images

without consent.”Knowing this, future research could attempt at ﬁnding

if comparisons exist in the culture and interactions between dating apps

that target LGBTQ þindividuals and their heterosexual counterparts.

Another potential solution, as suggested by Brandtzaeg, Pultier and Moen

(2019), is to adopt privacy-by-design, where users have to opt-in to share

data with the app provider and any third-party entity.

Finally, dating apps, like Grindr, provide an opportunity for MSM to

engage in serosorting (Newcomb, Mongrella, Weis, McMillen, &Mus-

tanski, 1999). Serosorting is the selection of sexual partners based on the

individual and his partner's HIV status (Parsons et al., 2005,2006), for

there are a number of HIV biomedical prevention strategies, including

antiretroviral therapy (ART), pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and

post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). According to Newcomb et al. (1999),it

is not uncommon for MSM to disclose their use of biomedical prevention

strategies on dating apps. In Newcomb et al.‘s study, the majority of MSM

who made these disclosures speciﬁcally requested to have condomless

anal sex (CAS). Newcomb et al. (1999) concluded ‘dating apps may provide

a more efﬁcient and less stigmatizing environment in which HIV-positive MSM

can disclose their status and seek partners to whom transmission is less likely’

due to their use of biomedical prevention strategies. However, a meta

analysis by Purcell et al. (Purcell, Higa, Mizuno, &Lyles, 2017) suggests

that although serosorting may be a strategy for reducing HIV risk when

condoms are not consistently used, for HIV-negative MSM who consis-

tently use condoms, the switch to serosorting is more risky. Future

research should continue to explore the role of serosorting on dating apps

for men seeking sex with men.

Although dating apps provide a mechanism for disclosure of HIV

status, and subsequent serosorting, it may also lend itself to a type of

fetish referred to as bug chasing. Bug chasers “fetishize semen from an

HIV-positive man and wish to be infected by it”(Jaspal, 2019). In other

words, the HIV-negative man seeks to have unprotected sex with an

HIV-positive man with the primary motivation being HIV infection (Díaz

et al., 2019). Research suggests only a small minority of MSM are bug

chasers (García-Iglesias, 2019); however, the exact prevalence is difﬁcult

to determine for several reasons (Jaspal, 2019). First, it is illegal in some

countries to deliberately infect a person with HIV (i.e., the person who

infects the bugchaser is referred to as the gift giver). Second, it is

considered a stigmatized sexual behavior (Jaspal, 2019). However,

Garcia-Iglesias (2019) argues that bug chasers do not necessarily exhibit

aﬁxed identity, but instead, their fetish can be ‘ﬂuid and evolving’.In

addition, biomedical prevention strategies now complicate fantasy

versus reality, in that bug chasers can ‘play out their fantasies while

remaining safe from HIV’(García-Iglesias, 2019). Overall, dating apps

allow MSM to share their HIV status, which may be a strategy for

reducing HIV risk. However, it can also facilitate risky sexual behaviors,

such as bug chasing.

So far, only apps like Grindr, which speciﬁcally target the LGBTQ þ

community, have been mentioned. One study, however, wanted to see

the experiences of women in this community on the Tinder app (Ferris &

Duguay, 2019). Despite Tinder's ability to switch sexual preferences so

that only those who also had those preferences would show up, partici-

pants still reported the opposite sex showing up. In this case, women

seeking women (WSW) said that men and heterosexual women still

showed up in a space thought to only allow other WSWs. Some believed

that these proﬁles switched their sexual preferences to do things such as

sway the potential partner's mind, act deceptively, or suggest unwanted

sexual acts. These intrusions caused participants to not see Tinder as a

queer women-friendly space. Another problem found was that the lesbian

digital imaginary that many saw within Tinder, such as the expectation

that users would make static claims about their sexual identity or their

stereotype-ﬁlled references to LGBTQ þculture, made users feel as if

their identities were stigmatized. Within dating apps –that do not

necessarily target a certain demographic while still allowing for speci-

ﬁcity of a sexual preference –exists ‘conventional and stereotypical pre-

sentations of sexual identity’that restrict not only those who may still be

ﬁguring out their sexual identity, but also LGBTQ þusers to feel the need

to present themselves along those stereotypes in order to feel recognized

in their community.

5. Digital breadcrumbs

When creating an account on a dating app, personal information (e.g.,

date of birth, age, lifestyle, sexual preferences, and proﬁle picture) needs

to be provided so that the app can ﬁnd the most preferable/most-ﬁtting

matches for the user thereby providing an opportunity to communicate

with others. For example, (private) data stored in the app could also be

recovered when one has access to the mobile device the app was installed

on. Given the number of dating app users steadily increasing, it is also

important to explore and understand the security and data risks associ-

ated with dating apps, as well as the potential digital artifacts that could

be acquired from the forensic analysis of a dating app or the device. For

example, Cahyani et al. (2019) suggested that in order to begin a digital

investigation process, some of the following questions should be asked in

regards to who, what, when, where, and how.

Who is the user?

Who is the partner and/or potential partners?

What online dating activities were conducted?

When were they conducted?

How can artifacts be extracted from mobile devices where the apps

were installed?

Using these questions as a guide, the following section will look at the

mobile artifacts/information that can be found when using dating apps

while also providing some recommendations on mobile security.

5.1. Digital artifacts

To secure the sensitive data often associated with using dating apps,

developers rely on various protocols, such as SSL, PKI, or TLS, to encrypt

communication. However, the use of these protocols does not necessarily

guarantee against data leakage. For example, an attacker can exploit

vulnerabilities (e.g., technical ﬂaws) either in protocols or their imple-

mentations to bypass the security measures and hijack the communica-

tions, as we have previously demonstrated (Shetty et al., 2020;D'Orazio

&Choo, 2017).

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

Generally, a dating app is considered insecure if any of the three CIA

aspects (i.e., conﬁdentiality, integrity, and availability) are violated

(Shetty et al., 2020;D'Orazio &Choo, 2017). Conﬁdentiality is

compromised when an user gains unauthorized access to someone's

personal information; Integrity is compromised when a user changes

someone's information; Availability is compromised when a user is able

to deny access to someone's information. To test these aspects, Shetty

et al. (2020) examined seven popular dating apps, including Tinder and

Happn (both of which utilize the geolocation feature), and created victim

dating app accounts, and an “evil”wireless access point that would be

able to intercept trafﬁc between the mobile devices. If a dating app is

secure, that trafﬁc should remain encrypted and unusable. For the apps,

Tinder, Happn, Badoo, and MeetMe, conﬁdentiality, integrity, and

availability were able to be compromised. Proﬁle images, chat messages,

Facebook proﬁle information, and credentials that many users attach to

the dating app were some of the artifacts found in the network trans-

actions that occur between mobile devices on a certain dating app. One

noticeable data leak that these four apps contained relates to the user's

credentials. If a person uses their Facebook credentials to log into the

app, an intruder can either obtain those credentials or an authentication

token. An authentication token is used by many apps to allow a user to

bypass the login process after the ﬁrst login. If an intruder knows the

token value, they are able to use it to login as the user to whom the token

belongs. For example, the authors were able to intercept and store the

victim's Facebook authentication token. After creating a fake Tinder

proﬁle, they intercepted another network packet containing the fake

proﬁle's token and then replaced it with the victim's. This gave the

intruder complete access to that person's proﬁle.

There are some dating apps that target a speciﬁc demographic in

terms of sexual lifestyle or orientation. Mata et al. (2018) analyzed the

Feeld app, which targets users who seek unconventional sexual lifestyles

through either sexuality or behaviors. This type of app deserves attention

because of the highly personal information a user would need to input. A

dating app is unique in that while the information is often intimate, users’

proﬁles are public. One scenario of risk to consider is that if an individual

of high status or position is also a user of an app, such as Feeld –what

would the consequences be if someone was able to gain access to their

intimate information and communications? Through the network activ-

ity and prediction of app activity, one study was able to identify one such

dating app user as most likely wealthy, gay, male, and a sufferer of

anxiety (Atkinson et al., 2018).

To see which artifacts could be obtained from Feeld, we created two

proﬁles that would then match and communicate with one another. From

the network trafﬁc alone, the users' GPS coordinates could be found. With

these coordinates, a process known as trilateration was attempted to see

if it was feasible to get an accurate location of another user. The distance

from a targeted user could be found from the app's database ﬁle –

db_app.db. In some dating apps, it is even contained in the packets sent

from device to server (Kim et al., 2018). This would be used as the radius

at the current location of the “adversary.”If the adversary obtains 3þ

distances between their coordinates and the target's, an accurate location

can be found (Kim et al., 2018). This can be done by using tools that allow

a user to have fake GPS coordinates multiple times, create new distances

from the target, and draw out the radii at the fake coordinates. Besides

the GPS coordinates, other personal data found included the following.

Within the mobile device's memory, user information such as real name,

gender, and email could be obtained. In one database ﬁle named “asso-

ciated_person,”there were matches to the user. The database previously

mentioned –db_app.db –contained various information on other users,

including proﬁle descriptions, sexual orientation and desires.

In addition to dating apps that have speciﬁc demographics like Feeld,

Cahyani et al. (2019) forensically analyzed 28 other dating apps and

found that apps such as MyCupid, Happn, and SayHi contained messages

between users that can be obtained using a mobile forensic tool. From

many of the apps, including Jack'd and Amores Possiveis, photos that had

been sent between users could be found with the latter app even

providing the ID of the device that took the picture(s). This should be

highlighted as this artifact gives an adversary a piece of information that

is outside of the app, which could provide them with the opportunity to

ﬁnd ways to not only target the user within the app, but also the user's

device.

In another more recent work (Knox, Moghadam, Patrick, Phan, &

Choo, 2020), Knox et al. studied two recent Android and three recent iOS

versions of the Happn dating app. Unlike most other dating apps, this app

allows users to track other users who had previously crossed paths and

view these users’information (e.g., proﬁle, pictures or other

user-uploaded information). Using both freely available and commercial

forensic tools, we were able to recover a broad range of digital artifacts

from the devices that had the apps installed.

Table 6 summarizes the types of digital artifacts found within each

reviewed study.

In addition to the digital artifacts that could be recovered from the

user's devices (e.g., Android and iOS devices), data about the users are

also available via the app developers and platforms. One such risk, as

described in Table 5, is the unauthorized access of user data (e.g., sexual

orientation, preferred sexual positions, HIV status, and geolocation in-

formation). For example, app developers or platforms may be compelled

to monitor, search, or hand over data of national security interest to

foreign government agencies. Such data could then be used to facilitate

honey trap operations. Due to such concerns, a Chinese company was

reportedly required by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the

United States (CFIUS) to sell its stake in Grindr (reuters.com;

washingtonpost.com).

Despite the security standards put into place by both dating and all

other app developers, it is clear that data/privacy leakage remains an

ongoing concern (Barrett, 2018;Jozani, Ayaburi, Ko, &Choo, 2020;Li

et al., 2014;Lutz &Ranzini, 2017;Pentina, Zhang, Bata, &Chen, 2016;

Reardon et al., 2019). To combat this, there are security and

privacy-preserving countermeasures that developers can incorporate to

achieve enhanced security and privacy for their users, including solutions

designed for other geolocation-based services (Argyros, Petsios, Siva-

korn, Keromytis, &Polakis, 2017;Shen, Zhou, Cao, Dong, &Choo, 2020;

Zhang, Mao, Choo, Peng, &Wang, 2020).

Table 6

Digital artifacts that could potentially be acquired during dating app forensics.

Artifact Types

Messages Images Location Credentials Authentication Token Personal Information Matches Matches' Information

Studies Shetty et al. (2020) ✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓✓

Atkinson et al. (2018) ✓

Cahyani et al. (2019) ✓✓ ✓ ✓✓

Choo et al. (2015) ✓✓✓ ✓

Kim et al. (2018) ✓✓✓ ✓

Mata et al. (2018) ✓✓✓ ✓ ✓✓

Knox et al. (2020) ✓✓✓✓ ✓ ✓✓

A. Phan et al. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021) 100055

6. Conclusion and future research

As the popularity of dating apps continues to grow, it is important to

also understand the potential risks associated with the use of such apps.

Potential crimes, such as stalking, fraud, and sexual abuse, could affect a

user for example in terms of physiological effects (e.g., sexual diseases or

eating disorders) and psychological effects (e.g., emotional abuse or

injury to self-esteem). In this study, we focused only on the dating app

literature published in English. However, there is a risk that the study

may ‘lose sight of the cultural speciﬁcities of Internet use’(or in the context of

our paper, dating app usage), as explained by Dhoest and Szulc (2016).

Hence, a potential future research agenda is to extend the literature re-

view to include articles published in other languages (e.g., Chinese -

Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and French), and study potential

cultural aspects associated with dating app usage.

While there are existing best practices and mitigation strategies that

dating app developers can utilize to create safer platforms for their users

physically and online, there is also a need for future research to inves-

tigate other possible solutions and whether the dangers explored are

correlational or truly caused by dating app usage. In addition, one of the

challenges faced by dating app researchers is the fast-paced technological

landscape (e.g., app features). Wang (2020), for example, noted that the

Chinese gay dating platform

Blued has evolved from a single-feature location-based dating app into a

multipurpose digital platform that includes newsfeeds, live streaming,

gaming, online shopping, and overseas surrogacy consulting [and this]

process of adding new features to the basic dating structure [is referred to]

as ‘functionality imbrication’(gongneng diedai). This means that new

functionalities overlap rather than replace old ones, so as to cater for

multisided markets.

Any supplemental features or functionalities introduced by the dating

platform could have legal, security, and privacy implications.

In addition, there are potential ethical issues involving the collection,

mining, and sharing of data from dating apps (Vitak, Shilton, &Ashk-

torab, 2016;Woodﬁeld &Iphofen, 2017, pp. 1–12). For example, insti-

tutional review board (IRB) approval is generally required for studies

that involve the interviewing of or collection of data from dating app

participants, such as in the study of Pond and Farvid (2017). However, do

researchers need IRB approval if they design tools to automatically crawl

and scrape data from these dating services (e.g., the OKCupid dataset

obtained using a data scraper (Kirkegaard &Bjerrekær, 2016))? Such

data can potentially be on a much larger scale, more revealing (including

PII), and most certainly obtained without the expressed consent of other

app users. Birchall (2016, 2017), for example, coined this phenomenon

as ‘shareveillance’. Hence, how should ethical practices evolve in our

increasingly digitalized society?

In the foreseeable future, dating experience may also be augmented

with other technologies (e.g., augmented reality or immersive reality)

and data from other devices such as devices on the users (e.g., smart lens

and smart clothing whose data collectively can be used to infer a user's

lifestyle preference), devices in the users (e.g., embedded medical de-

vices whose data can be used to infer a user's medical condition), and

devices in the user's physical proximity (e.g., data from other users' de-

vices may also be used to proﬁle the user's physical movements and who

the user interacts with and the nature of the interaction). This may result

in new security and privacy risks. Hence, it is also important to keep a

watchful brief of existing and emerging security and privacy risks with

the aims of designing security and privacy best practices and mitigation

strategies.

The constantly evolving technological landscape can also complicate

the drafting of new regulation and legislation (Hashemi &Hashemi,

2019;Mauer &Reppucci, 2019;Senator leyva introduces ﬂash, 2020;

Waldman, 2019), which generally lag behind technologies. Hence, one

potential future research agenda is to comprehensively review the legal

literature relating to dating apps and identify potential gaps.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing ﬁnancial

interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inﬂuence

the work reported in this paper.

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Darrell Norman Burrell

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Full-text available

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Modern smartphone platforms implement permission-based models to protect access to sensitive data and system resources. However, apps can circumvent the permission model and gain access to protected data without user consent by using both covert and side channels. Side channels present in the implementation of the permission system allow apps to access protected data and system resources without permission ; whereas covert channels enable communication between two colluding apps so that one app can share its permission-protected data with another app lacking those permissions. Both pose threats to user privacy. In this work, we make use of our infrastructure that runs hundreds of thousands of apps in an instrumented environment. This testing environment includes mechanisms to monitor apps' runtime behaviour and network traffic. We look for evidence of side and covert channels being used in practice by searching for sensitive data being sent over the network for which the sending app did not have permissions to access it. We then reverse engineer the apps and third-party libraries responsible for this behaviour to determine how the unauthorized access occurred. We also use software fingerprinting methods to measure the static prevalence of the technique that we discover among other apps in our corpus. Using this testing environment and method, we uncovered a number of side and covert channels in active use by hundreds of popular apps and third-party SDKs to obtain unauthorized access to both unique identifiers as well as geolocation data. We have responsibly disclosed our findings to Google and have received a bug bounty for our work.

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Article

Full-text available

Apr 2020
COMPUT SECUR

With today’s world revolving around online interaction, dating applications (apps) are a prime example of how people are able to discover and converse with others that may share similar interests or lifestyles. To connect the users, geolocation is often utilized. However, with each new app comes the possibility of poor security. For example, while apps with geolocation feature are intended for users to provide personal information that drive their search to meet someone, that same information can be used by hackers or forensic analysts to gain access to personal data. This paper examines a dating application called Happn (versions 9.6.2, 9.7, and 9.8 for iOS devices, and versions 3.0.22 and 24.18.0 for Android devices), which geographically works differently compared to most notable dating apps by providing users with profiles of other users that might have passed by them or in the general radius of their location. Encompassing both iOS and Android devices along with eight varying user profiles with diverse backgrounds, this study aims to explore the possibilities for a malicious actor to uncover the personal information of another user by identifying artifacts that may pertain to sensitive user data.

A Prototype Willingness Approach to the Relation Between Geo-social Dating Apps and Willingness to Sext with Dating App Matches

Article

Full-text available

May 2020
ARCH SEX BEHAV

Despite voiced concerns about sexual online risk behaviors related to mobile dating, little is known about the relation between mobile dating and sexting. The current cross-sectional study (N = 286) examined the relations between the use of geo-social dating apps and emerging adults’ willingness to sext with a dating app match. By drawing on the prototype willingness model, both a reasoned path and a social reaction path are proposed to explain this link. As for the reasoned path, a structural equation model showed that more frequent dating app usage is positively related to norm beliefs about peers’ sexting behaviors with unknown dating app matches (i.e., descriptive norms), norm beliefs about peers’ approval of sexting with matches (i.e., subjective norms), and negatively related to perceptions of danger to sext with matches (i.e., risk attitude). In turn, descriptive norms were positively and risk attitudes were negatively associated with individuals’ own willingness to sext with someone they had met through a dating app. As for the social reaction path, it was found that more frequent dating app usage was positively related to emerging adults’ favorable evaluations of a prototype person who sexts with unknown dating app matches (i.e., prototype perceptions). The analyses further revealed that such prototype perceptions positively linked with emerging adults’ own willingness to sext with a match. These results were similar among women and men and help explain why individuals may be willing to engage in sexting behavior with unknown others.

Does This App Respect My Privacy? Design and Evaluation of Information Materials Supporting Privacy-Related Decisions of Smartphone Users

Conference Paper

Jan 2019

Liberating or Disciplining? A Technofeminist Analysis of the use of Dating Apps Among Women in Urban China

Article

Jun 2018

Lik Sam Chan

Hate Crimes in Cyberspace

Book

Sep 2014

Danielle Keats Citron

Young Adult Use of Sexting

Chapter

Jan 2020

Along with many of the unintended consequences of recent technology, research regarding “sexting” is a little behind the times. For the purposes of this chapter, sexting is defined as the sending or receiving of explicit or sexually suggestive messages, images, or videos via cell phone, email, or social media. While early research approached sexting as dangerous, with implications for bullying, child pornography, and harassment, later research has progressed to paint it as more common and happening among consensual adults. This chapter attempts to explain how sexting is becoming a normalized part of young adult relationships.

Battling Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie Sharing: Empowerment Through Activism After Image Abuse

Chapter

Jan 2020

Image-based sexual abuse is a growing issue among young adults, and challenges remain as to how to support those who have had intimate photos distributed without their consent. This chapter begins with an exploration of image-based sexual abuse, including motivations for perpetration. The focus then shifts to address how victims might transform their feelings of helplessness into empowerment through challenging victim blaming, legislative avenues, and digital justice. Recommendations and solutions focus on engaging in activism. Throughout the chapter are stories from activists who work with Battling Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie Sharing (BADASS), a non-profit focused on education, legislation, and advocacy work.

To swipe or not to swipe: The Dark Tetrad and risks associated with mobile dating app use

Article

Sep 2020
PERS INDIV DIFFER

Dark Tetrad (D4) traits have been identified as predictors of dating related anti-social behaviour perpetration; however, less is known regarding risks for victimisation and links with coercive controlling behaviours across dating mediums. An online survey was completed by 1009 Australians aged 18 to 79 years (M = 32.4 years, SD = 13.48) assessing D4 traits, dating methods, perpetration or victimisation of anti-social dating behaviours, and experience of coercive controlling behaviours. Analyses found a higher likelihood of experiencing anti-social dating behaviours for those using online dating methods (OR = 2.01) and those higher in sadism (OR = 1.83). Key predictors of perpetration include primarily using face-to-face dating methods (OR = 3.17) and higher grandiose narcissism (OR = 1.80). Finally, there was a higher likelihood of experiencing coercive control behaviours in both the online (OR = 2.26) and face-to-face (OR = 2.76) groups, and in those higher in psychopathy (OR = 1.47). Mobile dating apps may provide a protective factor against both experience and perpetration of anti-social dating behaviours and coercive controlling behaviours. The D4 also continues to show strong links with perpetration of anti-social and controlling behaviours; however, sadism appears to be a risk factor for victimisation.

Understanding the motivations for using Tinder

Article

Mar 2020

Rhiannon B. Kallis

Tinder has become one of the most popular apps for online users to launch offline connections. While Tinder is culturally known as a “hook up app,” the true reasons behind users interacting on the app are unclear. The current study employed individual, in-depth interviews (N = 31) to understand the functions Tinder serves its users. Two themes emerged from the data to explain Tinder’s functions: Entertainment and Connections. An explanation of each theme and sub-theme revealed that while Tinder is used for self-entertaining purposes, most users seek offline relationships beyond the scope of a stereotypical hook up (i.e. friendship, romantic committed relationships). Implications from these findings should be explored in the future to determine how users’ motivations for interacting on Tinder affect their communication with other users and influence their relational outcomes.

Threaten me softly: A review of potential dating app risks

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