Evaluating the Privacy and Security Perspective of Older Adults Towards Online Dating

The use of online dating applications has become increasingly popular among younger populations, but older adults aged 65 and above are also engaging in this practice. However, the provision of personally identifiable information (PII) required by these applications raises serious privacy and security concerns, particularly for older adult users who are more vulnerable to online abuse and scams. This research aims to investigate the implications of these challenges in older adults' use of online dating applications. The approach involves mixed methods research, including a survey-based crowdsourcing experiment and semi-structured interviews with older adults who have used online dating applications. The survey-based experiment will seek to collect quantitative data on older adults' attitudes towards privacy and security. The semi-structured interviews will explore older adults' experiences and perspectives on privacy and security in greater depth. The expected results will provide insight into the privacy and security challenges faced by older adults, including their attitudes towards sharing PII and experiences with online abuse and scams. This research will also explore potential solutions for mitigating these risks, including the development of tools and interventions to enhance privacy and security in online dating applications. Ultimately, this research can contribute to the development of safer and more secure online dating applications for all users. It should be noted that this research is still in progress, and we are currently working on building out the surveys to be sent out to the participants.