Profiling

Profiling and automated decision-making at OkCupid

At OkCupid, your privacy is our top priority. It is at the core of the way we design and build the services and products you know and love, so that you can fully trust them and focus on building meaningful connections.

As part of our commitment to transparency in the way we process your information, we explain here what automated decision-making and profiling are, why it is at the very heart of our service (in fact, it’s probably the reason you love using our products!) and how you benefit from it.

What is automated decision-making and profiling?

Europe’s data protection framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), provides the following definitions:

• Automated individual decision-making: making a decision about an individual solely by automated means (i.e., using computers and algorithms only, without any human involvement in the decision-making process);
• Profiling: evaluating certain things about an individual, including interests, preferences or behavior, through an automated processing of personal data (e.g., using computers and algorithms to determine someone’s interests based on his or her online behavior).

Does OkCupid rely on automated decision-making or profiling?

Automated decision-making and profiling are invisible features that are at the core of the services you know and love, upon which we constantly improve and without which we would be unable to help you find the relationship you’re looking for.

We use these features for the following reasons:

• To allow you to build meaningful connections with other users.

  We use the information you and other users provide us (such as your profile), along with information we collect from your use of our service (like your location, should you allow us to collect it), to power our best-in-class matching algorithm and recommend the most compatible people to you, based on a number of criteria, including the attributes you told us (or we noticed) you like, common interests and location. Of course, we use the same process to recommend you to other users.

• Show you ads and offers that may be of interest to you.

  We use information about you to show you useful and relevant ads on and off our service and measure the effectiveness of these ads. We also use information about you to deliver offers and discounts tailored to your profile.

• To promote safety and security.

  We use automated decision-making and profiling as part of our moderation efforts, as well as to promote the safety and security of our users by making it easier to prevent illegal and unauthorized actions from happening and to swiftly and efficiently detect and fight those actions when they happen.

  This processing may have a significant impact on users found to be carrying out illegal or unauthorized activities, including suspension and account closure, without prejudice to other legal actions we could take.