Location based dating apps do they reveal too many details?

 Kristen Giessler just left a party downtown at the Boston Society of Architects. It was 11 p.m. She had had a few beers and wanted to wait a while before driving home. So in a move as natural as applying lip gloss, she clicked on her iPhone and logged onto the dating app OkCupid Locals.

Using the GPS coordinates tracked by her smartphone, the app pinpointed Giessler’s exact location — 290 Congress Street — and then displayed a list of single men within several blocks who were also on their phones and looking to meet someone right that minute. OkCupid Locals is meant to follow you wherever you go and find you matches along the way. And these guys seemed promising. She’d never seen them while looking at OkCupid profiles from her Ashland condo.

First, the 33-year-old Giessler clicked on the profile of a guy looking for someone to sing karaoke with, but he didn’t have a college degree, a deal breaker for her. Guy number two looked cute enough, but he was a Republican. “No way,” she said, laughing. The last guy was looking to see a movie and shared her interest in sailing. She messaged him: “Hi there : )” and he ping-ponged a message right back. Within minutes, standing several blocks away from each other, they were chatting about a possible date.
Singles wanted to date on the go, and technology was making it possible. And thus began the third generation of dating sites and the new era of mobile dating. “Mobile dating has created a new promise, an enticing one,” says Aaron Schildkrout, who grew up in Newton and cofounded HowAboutWe, which has a location-based dating app. “When you see these people on your phone, you think, ‘This person is real, they’re near me, and I may actually be able to encounter them in the real world.’ ”

In 2009, Grindr, a location-based dating app catering to gay men, exploded onto the dating scene everywhere from Province-town to the West Village. Grindr was the first app of its kind to get traction — a real-time dating app that allowed people to meet up instantaneously based on proximity. Suddenly it became easy to find out who else was gay, single, and steps from your front door. By March 2012, Grindr had 4 million users in 192 countries.
Several other location-based mobile apps catering to straight singles launched around the same time. MeetMoi, which came online as an iPhone and Android app in 2010, alerts users when another MeetMoi user is nearby. SinglesAroundMe, also released in 2010, features a singles-locator map of sorts; when you open the app, multiple pins drop onto the map, each indicating another single nearby. OkCupid launched its Locals app in 2011, giving users the chance to meet up with singles close by, and HowAboutWe’s location-based app, which came on the scene in 2011, shows date suggestions from people within several blocks of you if you’re accessing the app from a major city like Boston.

Another app, called Girls Around Me, accessed Foursquare location data to show where single women were checking in, and then offered up a link to each woman’s Facebook page. When Foursquare realized how its data were being used, it cut off the app’s access.

Dating industry executives say they have safeguards in place to protect users. Many apps allow you to control how much information others can see about you, including how specific your location information is, and even let you turn off the GPS entirely. But some apps, like SinglesAroundMe, can pinpoint your location down to the street you’re standing on, if you choose. Others, like OkCupid, give you a ballpark idea of how close someone is to you. “It startled me at first,” says Keyse Angelo, a 32-year-old woman in Jamaica Plain who has used OkCupid Locals. “I quickly turned the GPS off.” 

In response, some apps have blurred location information altogether. It’s why Angelo likes HowAboutWe’s dating app. If you live in Newton but you’re in the South End and want to suggest a date, other singles in the South End will know you’re there, but your location will be listed as “Newton.” The app also discourages people from listing times that they’ll be places, such as “Im heading to Minibar in Back Bay at 7pm. Martini?” HowAboutWe’s Schildkrout thinks that level of detail is “scary.”

Sam Yagan, CEO and founder of OkCupid, which boasts that its site has 10 million profiles, is deadpan when he says he didn’t build a dating app to help people have casual sex. “Obviously, we can’t control how people use OkCupid Locals,” he says, “but we’re trying to guide it toward more meaningful interactions.”http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/relationships/2012/08/03/can-gps-find-you-mate/929BJ9h79KlXNMl9YhSiXM/story.html