Your dating profile contains a huge amount of sensitive information about you. It has details about your gender identity, sexual preferences, geolocation, photos, political and religious views, as well as biometric data from your profile verifications. In any other context, you would think it insane to hand over this amount of sensitive information to a digital platform without a clear understanding of their data handling policies.
But we’ve been used to dating apps for a while now. They’re easy to download and set up, and accessible to anyone with a smartphone. And we’ve become complacent to any risks—so much so that most people have already forgotten how a data breach at the parent company Match Group compromised an undisclosed number of Tinder, Hinge, and OKCupid profiles just this January.
Simply deleting the app from your smartphone doesn’t do anything; even deleting your profile through the in-app account settings only goes so far. If you want to fully erase your dating profile and usage activity, you need to submit a formal data erasure request with the app’s customer support team right after you delete your profile.
It helps if you live somewhere with strong privacy laws like the GDPR or CCPA, but even if you don’t, most dating apps will honor an erasure request and having that email on the record also protects you legally in case of future data breaches.
I’ll walk you through the exact steps on how to delete your profile and data on five popular dating apps. We’ll cover account deletion, data removal, and the few things that still remain out there once disclosed.
Most dating apps draw a clear line between uninstalling the app, deleting your profile, and permanently erasing your data from their systems.
When you delete your account on a dating site, the platform stops displaying it to other people. But they might hold on to a backup of it in their servers in case you decide to come back. This can be anywhere from 28 days to six months, or in some cases even longer.
Even when a dating profile has deleted your account and erased its backup from their servers, they still hold on to certain types of data for safety and compliance reasons. Things like payment information, fraud and safety logs, or other legally important data are kept in their records permanently, in case they need it to honor legal requests or recover due payments.
When a breach happens, though, attackers typically grab whatever information they can get their hands on, including anything pertaining to deleted profiles like your payment methods from past subscriptions. That’s why security experts always recommend submitting a data erasure request after deleting any online account that contains sensitive or private information.
Regional privacy legislation like the EU GDPR, California’s CCPA, and the Delaware Personal Data Privacy Act make it compulsory for online platforms to honor data erasure requests. Even if you don’t reside in a place with strong consumer privacy legislation, companies will usually honor data erasure requests just to be out of the way of legal action.
For this guide, I’ll be walking you through the step-by-step process of deleting your account, along with all your stored and backed-up data, from Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid, and Facebook Dating.
You can also refer to the online documentation or usage guide of your specific dating app for up-to-date instructions on account deletion. Also, their privacy policy or terms of service pages usually contain the email you need to submit a data erasure request.
Open the app on your phone or visit Tinder.com.
Tap the profile icon, then tap the settings icon that looks like a gear.
Scroll down to the bottom and tap Delete Account.
