How to Protect Your Privacy on OkCupid
Don’t want users on OkCupid to see you viewed their profile? Don’t want Google to index yours?
What options do you have as a free user? What paid options are worth the money?
We’ll be breaking it all down here, including details on OkCupid’s often-misunderstood Incognito Mode.
What Can You Do for Free?
Free users of OkCupid can do the following to protect their privacy without paying anything at all.
These are either default or available online on your Settings page. On the app, tap the gear icon at the top of your profile page, then tap Privacy.
Hide Your Real Name & Email
By default. OkCupid doesn’t even collect real names.
Hide Your Profile from The Public
Using this setting means that only logged-in OkCupid users can view your profile.
Hide or Block Specific Users
Hiding is reciprocal, so it stops you from showing up in the other person’s search, doubletake, welcome and sidebar matches, and visitors list.
To additionally prevent someone from messaging you, you need to block them.
Block Your Profile From Google
How this works is not straight-forward. Basically, if you block any user, your profile won’t be indexed by Google going forward.
Browse Profiles Anonymously
Users can typically see who viewed their profile. If you don’t want to show up in profile visitors lists, you can shut this off. The downside is you won’t be able to see who visited your profile either.
Hide Your A-List or Incognito Status
OkCupid always displays profiles the same way whether they’re paying subscribers or not.
Note, however, that there is no OkCupid feature (free or paid) which lets you hide your “Online Now” or “Last Online” status.
What Privacy Options Come With An A-List Subscription?
A-List’s “Invisible Browsing” feature makes it so you can browse profiles without showing up on visitors lists BUT you can see who visited your profile at the same time.
What Is OkCupid’s Incognito Mode?
Incognito is a separate subscription from A-list, so they don’t share any features.
With an Incognito subscription, you can be 100% hidden to anyone on OkCupid who you haven’t already messaged or liked. That means you won’t show up in searches, double take, recent activity, etc. If you go to the profile directly, it says “Profile does not exist.”
However, if you have liked or messaged someone, your profile will display to them as normal.
You can turn Incognito on or off anytime. If you decide you don’t want someone you liked or messaged to see you anymore, you can hide or un-like them and disappear.
Overall, it seems like a good option if you don’t want to be seen by or interact with anyone you haven’t picked yourself.
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