
New website lets anyone spy on Tinder users - Jerry2
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/05/tinder-swipebuster-spy-on-users-privacy-dating-app
======
jamstruth
"I wanted to make a statement about privacy" \- Charges $5 to search a
"public" database.

No. You wanted to make money. Get off your high horse.

~~~
cthor
Businesses can be simultaneously profit seeking and for the public good. In
fact, that is the ideal.

It's concerning that many feel this is not the case.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because there's a conflict of interest there - making money can, and often
leads to business ending up harming the public to maintain/increase its
profits.

Personally, I'm fine with businesses doing work for the good of the public.
They should be transparent about it though.

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danso
Wait, Tinder has a public API? Damn it, whenever I have to teach students what
a public API is, I use Tinder as an example of a service that does not provide
an API and the resulting hoops a programmer has to jump through in order to
programmatically use the service:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgnxb-O-
CBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgnxb-O-CBQ)

~~~
nemothekid
I tried googling, but AFAIK, Tinder doesn't have an official API. Everything
I've seen is undocumented calls to their private API.

~~~
Others
From the article:

> But [the app] doesn’t do so by hacking into Tinder, or even by “scraping”
> the app manually. Instead, it searches the database using Tinder’s official
> API, which is intended for use by third-party developers who want to write
> software that plugs in with the site. All the information that it can reveal
> is considered public by the company, and revealed through the API with few
> safeguards.

~~~
archgoon
Yes; that is the line that danso noticed. However, nemothekid tried to verify
it and was unsuccessful in finding any documentation for this presumbably
publically available API. A github gist is the top google result for 'Tinder
API documentation'

[https://gist.github.com/rtt/10403467](https://gist.github.com/rtt/10403467)

which suggests that Tinder does not provide a public official API, people have
simply reverse engineered the network requests of the application.

In short, the article is wrong.

~~~
danso
Thanks for doing the Googling for me...should have assumed that the reported
article and/or the people behind the app would be unreliable sources...any
company of Tinder's size that puts the effort into making a public API would
make relatively decent documentation that would show up in a cursory Google
search result.

Also part of the lesson on "What is an API?": the concept that some companies
do not have an incentive to make an API...and Tinder, for many good reasons,
is one of those.

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ldom22
the cheating / jealousy market is a huge one. People with money that are
insecure or suspicious may spend billions each year in private investigators,
spy apps, etc. This page may be already making a killng, specially with all
the free publicity from the medias that featured it

~~~
dublinben
Do you think somebody who is worried about privacy threats like that is on
Tinder?

~~~
Larrikin
Most people don't realize they have an insanely jealous partner until either
they are caught or they catch their partner

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bechampion
Wasn't there a way to get this querying facebook not so long ago?
[https://inteltechniques.com/intel/osint/facebook.html](https://inteltechniques.com/intel/osint/facebook.html)
, i remember there was an option here..

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wodenokoto
the article says tinder has an api for 3rd party apps and services. I
completely fail to see the purpose of this.

what makes tinder tinder is it restricted usability. there's no search and no
rewind.

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leesalminen
Surely though "we" have nothing to hide!

~~~
roywiggins
Publishing your name and photo on Tinder isn't exactly hiding in the first
place. You are putting it out there for any stranger at all to see.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Of course, the expectation would not be "for any stranger at all to do
systematic and statistical analysis". Similarly how most people don't mind
stepping out of the house and being seen by strangers, yet reserving various
notions of privacy.

