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Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location

robertheaton.com

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Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location

#5
At one point I was working on a project with user locations/distance sharing.

My solution was just to Math.floor both of their lat/lng to be in increments of .25 miles. You could still use the triangulation trick to find that point, but .25 miles seemed like more than enough to obfuscate things.

Had I made the display in increments of miles only, that would have probably been even better.

Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location

#7

At one point I was working on a project with user locations/distance sharing. My solution was just to Math.floor both of their lat/lng to be in increments of .25 miles. You could still use the triangulation trick to find that point, but .25 miles seemed like more than enough to obfuscate things. Had I made the display in increments of miles only, that would have probably been even better.

Pretty sure tinder just makes the minimum miles away shown to be 2 miles. Simply one if statement.

Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location

#8
post #6

So the exact same triangulation vulnerability exposed and subsequently fixed in every dating app? How is this not Step #2 after “Build a dating app that Match Group will eventually acquire”

Interestingly, another researcher reported this exact same issue (being able to triangulate a user's location) last year: https://blog.securityevaluators.com/reverse-engineering-bumb...

Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location

#10
post #7

At one point I was working on a project with user locations/distance sharing. My solution was just to Math.floor both of their lat/lng to be in increments of .25 miles. You could still use the triangulation trick to find that point, but .25 miles seemed like more than enough to obfuscate things. Had I made the display in increments of miles only, that would have probably been even better.

Pretty sure tinder just makes the minimum miles away shown to be 2 miles. Simply one if statement.

You need to dither that by a half-mile as well so that the baddies can't use the border between e.g. 2 and 3 miles to do the same test.
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