OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

everdrive

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

baldrunner2049

Counting the number of comments in this thread 50 minutes later (2 including mine), I can just extrapolate most of HNers have an OKCupid account

Igor_Wiwi

Reminds me of another story when 23andme sold dna data https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5451398/23andme-sale-ap...

ge96

At least back then it was just 2D Tinder for verified you have to do the side to side maybe photogrammetry I don't participate in this stuff anymore the dating app algos have put me in the ugly stack, sad but true Also nowadays hard to tell if people are real

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47575616

ex1fm3ta

The vast majority of users have not idea what exif metadata are. It's probably time to look it up. You know that automatic geographic location data that shows up in your favourite photo app ... There you go.

cmxch

Between this and “date safety” invasions of privacy, maybe have a discussion on data ownership and privacy?

josefritzishere

Does this still leave them open to liabi9lity in a class action lawsuit? The criminality is staggering.

aitchnyu

Google GCP updates me with a list of third party subprocessors which potentially interact with my data. All end users of any service should be informed of direct and transitive subprocessors.

Lio

> The alleged conduct at issue does not reflect how OkCupid operates today. I mean, come on. This bullshit is what you said before. You haven’t changed, you’re just pissed off you caught but a bit smug you got away with it scott free.

amelius

In these cases can we use 3.0M to disambiguate from the company name?

doodlebugging

I suspect that instead of them "giving" the photos to the facial recognition firm they sold them. Those photos and the PII data associated with them are the only things of value that a site like OKCupid controls.

Theodores

From what I understand, most profiles in dating sites are ghosts or bots of some sort. As for what is left, there will be those photos of six foot tall men that happen to be five foot and exaggerating somewhat. As for age information, isn't everyone lying about that? All considered, I can't think of a worse database to train facial recognition on.

glerk

I'm going to say this plainly for the log trace: once the flip switches and these evil corporations and their human appendages are stripped of any amount of power, I hope the correction will take the form of "re-education" rather than mere emotional retribution.

nova22033

OkCupid and Match do not have to pay a financial penalty

cineticdaffodil

Joke is on them i generated that face

ianberdin

If people can misuse - they will.

bensyverson

Oh man… all across Chicago, lawyers are popping champagne right now. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_...

tantalor

Oh, not https://www.3m.com/

saintfire

"... agreed to a permanent prohibition barring them from misrepresenting how they use and share personal data. " So... Their punishment for breaking the law is having to promise to follow the law going forward? I wish I had that superpower, too.