Exploring the Privacy Experiences of Closeted Users of Online Dating Services in the US

Online dating services present significant privacy risks, especially for LGBTQ+ people who are "in the closet" and have not shared their LGBTQ+ identity with others. We conducted a survey (n = 114) and nine follow-up interviews with US-based, closeted users of online dating services focused on their privacy experience. We found that participants in the study were strongly concerned about the risk of being seen by social relations and institutional data sharing practices like targeted advertising. Participants experienced a range of privacy and safety harms, including inadvertent outing, unauthorized saving and sharing of photos, extortion, and harassment. To protect their privacy, participants typically limited the amount of information and the photos they included in their profile. In order to improve their privacy experience, participants requested better profile visibility controls, limits on the ability of others to download or screenshot their photos, better user verification, and making premium privacy features available for free.