OkCupid Settles After Selling 3 Million Photos to a Facial Recognition Company

The FTC has determined that OkCupid and their owner Match Group don’t have to pay a fine after settling a case in which they shared 3 million user photos and location information to a facial recognition firm.

OkCupid and Match did not admit or deny the allegations, but agreed to be permanently prohibited from misrepresenting the way they collect and share personal data.

In a statement to Ars Technica, OkCupid said “While we do not admit any wrongdoing, we have settled this matter with the FTC with no monetary penalty to resolve an issue from 2014 and move forward.”

They went on to state that they do not operate the same way they did in 2014 and have “strengthened our privacy practices and data governance to ensure we meet the expectations of our users.”

An article by The New York Times from 2019 documents a facial recognition AI company called Clarifai that claimed to have access to OkCupid’s database of faces, likely the company that was sent the data although the party is not named by the FTC.

As well as OkCupid, Clarifai had signed a deal with a social media company to use photos of faces from them as well.

OkCupid said in the article that they did “not enter into any commercial agreement then and have no relationship with them now.”

Clarifai gained access anyway despite the lack of a “commercial agreement,” and its users were not notified or informed in any way how their data was being used.

Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, said that he would “would sell its facial recognition technology to foreign governments, military operations and police departments provided the circumstances were right,” according to the same NYT article.

The FTC, in its complaint, detailed that

Humor Rainbow specified that it does not share personal information with anyone other than service providers, business partners, or other businesses within its family of businesses; in response to legal obligations (e.g., in response to a subpoena, court order, or investigation); or when it informs users and gives them an opportunity to opt out of having their personal information shared.

Humor Rainbow is the parent company of OkCupid and subsidiary of Match Group.

According to the FTC:

when a news story revealed that the third party had obtained large OkCupid datasets, OkCupid claimed to the media and OkCupid users that it was not involved with the third party.

The blatant lies and misuse of their customers’ data earned them a whopping $0 fine and essentially a “don‘t do that again” from the FTC.