Tinder is the latest, and most surprising, casualty of Facebook’s scandal
Facebook has started to restrict the amount of data it gives to third-party services, but users of one such service, Tinder, have found that these changes broke the popular dating app.
After initially saying that it had already fixed the loopholes that allowed the misuse of up to 87 million of its user’s data, Facebook has more recently pledged to change how much data third-party apps are able to access.
One such app is Tinder, which uses people’s Facebook profiles for profile pictures, age data, your likes, and other information. However, Facebook’s privacy changes initially stumped the dating app, with users reporting that it gets stuck in a loop while they’re no longer able to tell Facebook to give it access to the data it needs, reports The Verge.
Tinder responded quickly to the outage, saying via Twitter that it was working on a fix.
A technical issue is preventing users from logging into Tinder. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to have everyone swiping again soon.
— Tinder (@Tinder) April 4, 2018
Just a few short hours later, the company announced that it had been able to solve the issue and restore access to the service.
And we're back! Apologies for the inconvenience. We missed you too. ? pic.twitter.com/796L1gLsCv
— Tinder (@Tinder) April 4, 2018
However, some users on Twitter are claiming that they have nevertheless lost pre-existing matches and conversations.
We were able to verify that Tinder now appears to be working as normal, however we were not able to check if pre-existing matches and conversations were affected by the outage. It may be worth logging out and logging back in again, to see if that manages to restore them.
With Facebook appearing to now be committed to solving the problems that lead to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the other examples of data overreach that have since been discovered, it’s unlikely that Tinder will be the last third-party app to suffer an outage.
In recent years, a huge number of web services have embraced using Facebook logins to streamline the process of creating new user accounts. It’s unclear how many of these will have relied on user data that Facebook is now unwilling to share with third parties.
Were you affected by the Tinder issue? Let us know @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
