Zachary Seward reports:
Mobile dating app Tinder appears to have exposed the physical location of its users for much longer than a “few hours,” as the company’s chief executive claimed. New evidence suggests the privacy breach dated back at least two weeks.
Quartz reported yesterday that the data files sent from Tinder’s servers to its apps had been revealing sensitive information about users, including their last known location and Facebook ID. Reaction to the piece centered on the fact that Tinder hasn’t disclosed the issue to its users. CEO Sean Rad said one reason they haven’t is that the breach didn’t last very long: ”An engineer basically found a hole that was there for like an hour,” he said in an interview yesterday.
But that wasn’t the first time the issue reared its head. Interviews with several people who have worked with Tinder’s API, which is how the company’s servers communicate with its apps, extend the timeline of the privacy breach considerably.
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