Dating Apps: OSINT Data Goldmines | Blog

At a time when our lives are becoming ever more integrated with the online realm, dating apps have become a new norm. And their stellar rise in popularity is hardly to be wondered at. After all, a lot of people simply don’t have large enough social circles—or a fearless enough extraversion—to find romance in “traditional" ways.

But for OSINT practitioners, dating apps provide a different type of opportunity—they are extremely rich in the type of publicly available data that can make an investigation. So today, we’re exploring how these platforms work, what kind of data they expose, and how investigators can turn the information they contain into actionable insights.

A Key OSINT Resource

While online dating is as old as the internet itself, the concept of the dating app represents a paradigm shift in the way web-based resources are used for romance-seeking. Gone are the lengthy profile descriptions and not-so-cool stigmas of old—we now have simple, user-friendly platforms, offering a fun, commitmentless, and easy-going experience, accessible to (and accepted by) a far wider usership.

Just looking at the US alone, the number of dating app users is currently around the 61M mark, representing more than a fifth of the entire population. And the numbers are set to steadily rise moving forward. In holding data on large swathes of the population, dating apps represent a powerful—and even vital—resource for the OSINT investigator.

With its wide user base and store of critical personal details, dating apps are an OSINT resource that can't be ignored

Dating App Categories

While major platforms such as Tinder are designed to be inclusive for users of a wide variety of taste and purpose, we’ve also seen a proliferation in all kinds of apps that cater to something more specific or exclusive such as friendships, sexual encounters, or specific communities. Here’s a loose breakdown of the dating app landscape:

Major Apps. Apps like Tinder, designed to be used by a broad audience.

Friendship Apps. Apps helping people find platonic connections.

Casual Hookups. Apps for short-term, no-strings-attached relationships.

Niche Communities. Apps designed for LGBTQIA+ users, unique interests, or even discreet dating for married individuals.

Some apps even facilitate transactional interactions, such as escort services or paid video chats. Yet despite their variety, there is a common theme of connection—be it romantic, platonic, or something else entirely.

What Data Can Be Extracted from Dating Apps?

For open-source intelligence analysts, dating apps are goldmines of information, offering a wealth of details on their individual users. This is partly due to the nature of such apps, which require certain details in order for a given profile to be valid. These usually include a photo of the user as well as their name, username, age, email address, geolocation, and gender preference.

On top of this, profiles may include a range of other details that are optional for the user, such as, birthdays, hobbies, lifestyle habits, and even vaccination status. All of this data is potentially of great value in a variety of investigation objectives, from uncovering hidden connections to deanoymizing individuals involved in criminal activity.

Misuses and Dangers

Aside from providing information that may have significant implications in a wide range of investigations, dating apps can also themselves be territories where misdeeds abound, and where OSINT approaches can be instrumental in protecting users and tracking down perpetrators. Such dangers include:

Scams and Catfishing. Despite features like ID verification, many platforms make these security measures optional, leaving them susceptible to catfishing—the assumption of a false online persona for underhand purposes. This means users constantly need to be on the lookout for potential scam artists, who can be highly convincing and lure people into all kinds of difficulties, including:

Financial Fraud. Convincing victims to send money under false pretences.

Sextortion. Blackmail involving intimate images.

Manipulation. Gaining emotional trust to exploit individuals emotionally or financially over time.

Pro Tip. Before engaging with someone online, it's a good idea to consult public registries and other resources to verify their background.

Extracting Tinder Account Details by Alias

SL Crimewall offers a suite of extraction methods for the popular dating app, Tinder. Here is an example showing how the platform can be instrumental in mapping out a rich digital footprint of your subject, disclosing a range of vital information that can progress a variety of cases.

Start by finding the alias as displayed on another social media profile that you’ve already identified as belonging to your subject.
Input this as the active data in a Tinder Get Profile method. This will give you the Tinder account whose username matches the inputted alias.

Users often employ the same username (or alias) across their social media environments, meaning an individual’s platform profiles can often be located via this common data point

From here you can unpack the profile details and view them in the Properties tab. This will include crucial data such as name, profile image, age, and possibly occupation.

With these nuggets of information, you have the possibility of pivoting in various directions and expanding the digital footprint

With the profile details in hand, you can then cross-reference this data with other platforms, such as LinkedIn, and glean even more information.
We can also run the Tinder Get Photos transform to obtain all images from the profile. These photos may reveal additional personal information, such as locations, family members, or employment details. What’s more, by employing the facial recognition feature, we can find a large proportion of the subject’s online environment and map out a thorough-going digital footprint.

By extract critical data from a Tinder profile, it’s been possible to find the subject’s LinkedIn page, and in turn their professional background plus other useful details

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While not explicitly stated on a given profile, Tinder can be used to determine a subject’s date of birth. Here’s how it works: a Tinder profile must include the user’s age as a platform requirement. With a good monitoring tool (available on Crimewall), you can set the parameters so that you’re informed the moment your suspect’s age changes, thereby giving the actual date.

The Takeaway

Much like social media platforms, dating apps represent an incredibly rich resource of publicly available data that all OSINT practitioners should be using. Aside from clearly being valuable for investigating in-platfrom misuses, the details offered by apps such as Tinder can allow investigators to pivot a wide range of cases into new productive directions, and expand detailed and telling digital footprints.

If you’d like to learn more about SL Crimewall and how it can leverage social media including dating apps to great effect in your investigative workflows, follow the link below. We’ll set up a personalized product demo with one of our specialists so you can see just how effective the tool can be for your specific purposes.

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