The Illusion of Privacy: Geolocation Risks in Modern Dating Apps

Key takeaways

• Dating apps often use location data, to show users nearby and their distances. However, openly sharing distances can lead to security issues. Techniques like trilateration allow attackers to determine user coordinates using distance information.


• Despite safety measures, the Hornet dating app (a popular gay dating app with over 10 million downloads) had vulnerabilities, allowing precise location determination, even if users disabled the display of their distances. In reproducible experiments, we achieved location accuracy within 10 meters.


• The recent …

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