Tinder Embraces Encryption (theverge.com)

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has managed to get Tinder to encrypt the photos sent between its servers and its app. The 69-year-old Senator wrote a letter to Tinder back in February requesting that the company encrypt photos. They apparently already implemented the feature, but "waited to write back to Wyden until it also adjust a separate security feature that makes all swipe data the same size," reports The Verge. "The size of the swipe data was used by security researchers to differentiate actions from one another. That change wasn't implemented until June 19th."

Comments

Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

That app is just part of the downfall

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure about that? Throughout the developed world, our birth rates have gotten too low. Tinder at least makes people fuck, which is part of the solution.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

How many hookups are intending to procreate?

Re: Disgusting

[aliquis]

BS.

Re: Disgusting

[Sique]

Too low for what? If you are defining a "right" birth rate, you first have to argue why you think this is right.

Apparently, birth rates shrink if two factors come together: 1) Child mortality rates sink so you can expect with high probability that your own children will grow up. 2) You don't have to rely solely on your own family members if you reach a high age.

Birth rates shrink everywhere, also in so called Third World countries. The only places that see high birthrates right now are country with very long civil wars going on, like Afghanistan or Congo, both which have civil wars which date back to the 1970ies.

If you want high birth rates back, it's easy: Destroy any pension schemes and cut all medical support to pregnant woman and young children.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal, however, a friend of mine met his wife through tinder. They are trying for a baby however due to be being I. Their 30s require the help of fertility treatment.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

Guy who is 69 wants to 69 and swipe left and right.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

"Too low" means less than ~2.2 children per woman in the developed world, which is what is required to sustain a population. Fewer children (e.g. 1.1-1.3 in Japan and Italy) results in too many old people compared to young people, which at our current tech level means that we can't give all the old people the care and pensions they need while simultaneously maintaining an economy. Immigration doesn't fix the problem in full, since most immigrants are adults, so they're expensive to educate to the jobs society requires.

Re: Disgusting

[Sique]

And why would we need to sustain a population? This is no value per se. And if we want less pensions, people have to work longer until retirement.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s not because theyâ(TM)re in their 30s. That is abnormally early to require medical assistance.

I do not know the real reason and will not speculate but for a fact it is not age related.

They are obviously embarrassed by the truth which is why they told all their family and friends that bullshit lie.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

because the stock market(old people) demand cheaper services !!!!, it's a scam, they're scared noone will hold their wee wee, forgetting their own parents weren;'t ever such pansies

Re: Disgusting

[Kjella]

Birth rates shrink everywhere, also in so called Third World countries. The only places that see high birthrates right now are country with very long civil wars going on, like Afghanistan or Congo, both which have civil wars which date back to the 1970ies.

Not only those places, birth rates are also very much a cultural thing and countries like Nigeria still have a birth rate of 5.5 kids/woman even though the GDP/capita has been growing quite a bit because that must become the new normal. I also think you forgot a 3) Women have their own education, career and life rather than be child-bearing/raising housewives married away at 15. Obviously if you dedicate 50% of your economic/leisure potential to raising kids you can have your own soccer team. While in the western world most consider popping out a couple when they're 30. The funny part is that certain people go crazy over immigrants with like crazy high birth numbers while at the same same time wailing that the natives aren't producing enough children. Like, they want more children but not those children. Otherwise we could trivially fix this by simply giving more benefits to those who'll take on the "job" of having kids until supply meets demand.

Re: Disgusting

[TimMD909]

If they're not too egotistical, I hope they choose adoption if their attempts bare no fruit. That's how I got my awesome family. I often joke with my dad that he should've looked into the return policy, cuz I was an asshole soon as puberty took hold.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

While embracing his tinder.

Re: Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

And the US is socially no longer willing or able to subsidize childrearing. People already complain about supporting people who do nothing but have kids for money. Mostly the complaint is about "those people" getting money, mind you.

Re: Disgusting

[triffid_98]

If you are living in France or Japan you already know what "too low" looks like. If you live in certain other countries with 6 guys for every job *cough* Italy, you know the reverse... although that's not even their fault this time, it's all team Merkel

Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

The picture will still be decoded on computers under physical control of people, stored in RAM, permanent cache, and the screenshotable display itself. Including the physically separate camera held in front of it.
An you know what else is stored in permanent memory? The damn key!! To decrypt the data! And a piece of code to do it!

The notion of giving a pattern of information to literally everyone, *while* keeping it secret, takes a very special kind of cocaine-snorting moron. Ususally found talking about "IP" or "DRM" and not meaning the Internet protocol or render manager.

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Actually encryption does exactly that every day, all day. It is sad, but alas no longer uncommon, to see such a pathetically ignorant post on Slashdot.

Re:Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not for DRM or IP management at all, it's for privacy. The purpose of end-to-end encryption is so you can receive the data you want without the whole world knowing what you received. You know, one of the basic purposes of web-based SSL.

If you don't care about the world knowing who you swipe right on, fine. But there's a whole lot of people who might.

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

What he is saying is encryption does not protect the photos once they are decided on the device. Once decoded they can be copied and shared.

Notice your friend's SO has an active profile? What is to stop you from taking a screenshot and informing your friend?

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Again, this is common knowledge and doesn't mean encryption doesn't work; it merely means things that have been successfully decrypted are no longer encrypted. No shit Sherlock.

Re:Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not for DRM or IP management at all, it's for privacy. The purpose of end-to-end encryption is so you can receive the data you want without the whole world knowing what you received.

Is it end-to-end? So that only the two people swiping each other can see each other?

Maybe I'm wrong, but probably the server is quite a relevant MITM. A server, no less, which willingly sends all photos to people who want to see and swipe photos, because that is the purpose of the server.

Not that much difference to posting on a public website.

Re:Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

encrypting the photos is to reduce snooping of traffic and compiling data from that, like by carriers, hackers and taps on the wifi and the backbone and such, not to protect the data once it's on your device (that's the job of the hardware and software running on it)...

so the senator is not the clueless one here, you are, for not actually comprehending what this is about.

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT YHL FOAD

Re:Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not for DRM or IP management at all, it's for privacy.

Bullshit, it's so Senator Clean can get a little on the side without his Wife's PI finding out about it easily.

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't understand the client/server concept if you refer to the server as the "middle."

The server is an end, the client is the other end. Not your client and the other person's client. You are both connected to the server, not each other.

Re: Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's his point, Captian Bumblefuck; if the images are stored unencrypted in the sever, it means fuck all. Which is in all likelihood exactly what's happening, otherwise the party on the receiving end would only see pseudorandomness golbeltygook.

This encryption could only be useful for the privacy of pairs of people further exchanging photos after the first swipe is completed.

Re:Insanely clueless. Snake oil like DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - SOS/SSS - same sad story. If it's compromising, you sure as hell don't want to give it to random employees of an internet service provider, and expect they'll keep your little secret.

At one time I'd have thought like you - snorting was the cause. Now I think it's the mind controlling entangled photons radiating for thirty feet from every store front down town ...

one down many features to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they just need to stop all the fake users, and stop the spamming

Pathetic straw man.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody said encryption doesn't work. I said it is as pointless as a huge steel door with no walls left and right of it.

(Or more precisely: Like telling a butler that you hired from an untrusted butler service company, to put your nudes in a safe, carry that safe through a perfecly secure physical tunnel, to give it to another person who also has a key for it, so she can take a look at them... And then expect your nudes to stay secret, because she also had a butler she hired from that company to use the key on the safe, instead of her doing it personally.
And the butler has no free will, but is a robot who has to precisely do what his owner tells him. So the fact that he was pre-programmed by a company does not mean shit, even if you trusted it.)

Re: Pathetic straw man.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yeah. It is useless.... Banks don't have online services. It could never work! Yes, you are a fucking moron.

Re: Pathetic straw man.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just keep sucking that corporate cock, shill. I mean it's all encrypted so no one will know.

Re:Pathetic straw man.

[drinkypoo]

Nobody said encryption doesn't work. I said it is as pointless as a huge steel door with no walls left and right of it.

That's a stupid thing to say.

Encryption does part of the job. Other kinds of security do the rest of the job. The job doesn't get done without encryption, which makes it the opposite of pointless.

Re:Pathetic straw man.

[serviscope_minor]

it's a pretty common attitude here and comes up on every subject from programming, tech in general, discrimination, climate change, pollution, electric cars, space progress and politics and privacy, namely if we can't have a solution instantly which does everything perfectly, then we shouldn't bother at all. Taking steps towards a better solution seems right out.

Re:Pathetic straw man.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously it defeats the point if the intended recipient can't decrypt it. Clearly you should be careful who you send nudes to. However, the point is that you don't have to worry about J. Random Hacker being able to watch you do this in real time on the network.

Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Wyden wrote a letter to Tinder back in February requesting that the company encrypt photos. It had apparently already done so (the letter says they implemented the feature on February 4th)

Why is Wyden even mentioned? He didn't contribute anything here.

Good for him.

[Anonymous Coward]

69 and interested in Tinder. I would have pegged Senator Wyden as a "Plenty of fish kind of guy".

Why are people here so STUPID?

[Anonymous Coward]

You too *completely* missed the point.

Nobody said encryption does not work.
I said what is the point, if the whole FUCKING point of Tinder is to share your swipable pictures with everyone in your area?

That by definition already makes the picture public!
L

Not even mentioning the fact that the Tinder client itself written by an untrusted party.
Let alone that said app includes the decryption key, enabling the recipient (which includes every single Tinder employee and contractor, including the entire CA company) to share it not only by making a photo, but also by grabbing it losslessly, before sharing it behind your back.

Are you schizophrenic or how can you possibly not get this?

Previously, I swore that humanity is getting dumbet every day.
Now I *know*: https://m.slashdot.org/story/342214
The study from behind the paywall: http://sci-hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115

"Everyone's photos"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I just checked my childhood album and I can still recognize myself. They did a poor job.

Did some Wyden staffer write that summary?

[msauve]

"Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has managed to get Tinder to encrypt..."

No, he didn't. Tinder's letter said they started encrypting on Feb 6. Wyden's letter asking they encrypt was dated Feb 14.

Re:Did some Wyden staffer write that summary?

[Mal-2]

Even without that, all he could have done in this short a time frame is get them to do what they already wanted to do, only sooner. If they didn't already have this in the works at the time of the request, it wouldn't be done by now.

Shoot More Journalists

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news made them stoopid.

Election year

[tomhath]

Mitt Romney is running for the Senate seat Orin Hatch is leaving. You'll be hearing more from the Democrats related to all the wonderful things they do in Utah, like this - taking credit for making the Internet safe for your children even though Wyden muddled in after the fact.

Re:Election year

[Anonymous Coward]

That "news" slant may be true, particularly on Slashdot, but Wyden is a Senator from Oregon, not Utah.

Re:Election year

[gumbi west]

Who will threaten to blow up our computers if we download music without Orin Hatch?

Re: Election year

[triffid_98]

Tipper Gore?

ATM CARDS

[Anonymous Coward]

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Here is our price list for ATM cards:
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What is Tinder

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really for anonymous s3x? If it is, probably ain't eligible, since it's been about 25 years ... wouldn't know how. Seem to remember it was OK tho ...

In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

Tinder Encrypts Embraces

Wonder why Wyden cares about Tinder...

[ayesnymous]

hmm

Seriously?

[shplopt]

I know I shouldn't be shocked - shocked! - to hear this, but the idea that they just didn't bother to encrypt photos is a simply breathtaking feat of negligence.