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<aside> ➡️ Examples of Matchmaking and Online Dating Services:** Grindr, Tinder, Bumble

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<aside> 🔷 Starting from 2017, a digital rights organization, Article 19, investigated how popular dating apps are used and abused in the MENA region, including Iran, to target LGBTQIA+ communities [17]. Through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with over 400 Iranians, Egyptians, and Lebanese, the report found that dating apps lack basic security features, leaving users vulnerable to entrapment, arrest, and abuse by authorities. 50% of respondents who stopped using certain apps mentioned physical security concerns [18]. Digital rights advocates made recommendations to apps like Grindr to implement enhanced security features and use other design techniques such as best practices around TLS/SSL, account registration security, translation of apps’ safety reporting mechanism in specific languages, geolocation changes to obscure the location of users, and app-cloaking. While some progress has been made, activists must continue pressuring companies to prioritize the safety of users in Iran and other high-risk countries where LGBTQIA+ communities face danger for using these apps.

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Human Rights Concerns

<aside> 📌 (UDHR Article 3: Right to life, liberty, security; UDHR Article 2: Freedom from discrimination; UDHR Article 12: Privacy)

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The use of matchmaking and dating apps poses grave risks to the safety and privacy of LGBTQIA+ individuals in Iran. There have been popular apps that lack essential security and privacy features like encryption and anonymity, enabling Iranian authorities to identify, locate, and target queer users. There are also reports of police creating fake profiles to entrap and arrest LGBTQIA+ people on these apps. In addition, some apps lack in-app tools in Persian to report issues, making it difficult for LGBTQIA+ users to seek remedy for rights violations. Apps that use geolocation tracking without strict privacy protections endanger users by potentially exposing their locations and identities.

❇️ List of Recommendations

• Allow users the option to easily conceal or obscure their location to prevent tracking. Constantly improve geolocation protections.
• Provide in-app reporting mechanisms with translated Persian option so LGBTQIA+ users can report safety concerns, harassment, or rights violations on the platform.
• Establish clear policies against sharing any user data with the Iranian government that could identify or endanger LGBTQIA+ individuals.
• Proactively moderate platforms to remove fake profiles used for entrapment of LGBTQIA+ users by Iranian law enforcement.
• Issue transparency reports detailing requests for user data by Iranian authorities, technology used to protect users, and company policies on human rights.
• Consult frequently with Iranian LGBTQIA+ rights groups to identify ongoing threats facing users in Iran to rapidly implement appropriate safeguards.

Resources

• Apps, arrests and abuse in Egypt, Lebanon and Iran
• Digital security guide: How to protect yourself on dating apps
• Design From the Margins Centering the most marginalized and impacted in design processes - from ideation to production