An added bonus of using just-off-reality information is you can catch services misusing your PII. Perhaps you receive a spam email that tries personalizing to includes your falsified city. It’s easier to trace where that information came from.
Inevitably there will be some data that you cannot falsify as you build your dating profile. Things like phone number, email address, gender, desired match preferences, and the tone of voice used in your texts are harder to fake. We have to find creative, privacy solutions.
Compartmentalization is a security practice where you separate your information or habits. These compartments might be based on task, company, time, or other logical separators. If one compartment is hacked and the information is leaked, it doesn’t expose the whole of your information or identity.
When creating a dating profile, tweak the information you enter, as I mentioned earlier. For everything else, we start separating using some technology solutions.
Use A Burner Phone Number
I also previously defined and provided lovingwomen.org nettstedet der some FAQs about burner phones. Keeping your dating profile private is another perfect use case for a burner phone.
Match-making companies typically want to ensure that the accounts on their platform are legitimate users and not spammers or robots with fake profiles. The idea is that since there are a limited number of phone numbers, user accounts that have a phone number are less likely to be spambots.
To maintain privacy, you should not use your actual primary cell phone number. You’re usually asked to enter a telephone number where a verification call or SMS text message is sent during sign-up. Once verified, this phone number may not be used for other interactions on the dating website.
The process of getting a burner is reasonably simple if you follow our guide. Use a burner phone number for online interactions like account verification.
When signing up for a dating service, a phone number isn’t the only personally identifiable information to compartmentalize. This next piece is far easier to segregate in your dating profile.
Using Fake Email Addresses
Most people wonder why their email inbox is jammed with spam. Similar to thoughtlessly giving out their phone number, users will drop their email into any website without knowing the consequences.
The problem this causes is that, for example, if you use your address, you can’t simply change your address if your Gmail becomes unusable because it’s been hacked or chalked full of spam.
Email forwarding services solve this situation by allowing users to create disposable email addresses that forward messages from one location to another.
For instance, you might create a forwarding address like MChu- to receive emails from various dating profiles. This address forwards all emails to your regular inbox, so the dating services never have your actual address.
I’ll admit that I go overboard creating a unique forwarding email address for every site and company I do business with. Since I’m using a password manager, keeping track of the compartmentalized emails is not a hassle and prevents me from forgetting them.
- SimpleLogin (this is what I use)
- AnonAddy
- MySudo (also can do phone numbers)
Hang In There: I have some tips for meeting other singles that don’t involve dating apps or all this tech stuff further in this article.
Dating apps are more invasive than social media because you’re really opening up your desires for a romantic and/or intimate match.
It’s actually pretty difficult to make social media apps like dating service appspanies spend a lot of resources and do not always get it right.