Feb 14, 2024 - 16:45
By huffpost.com

The 1 iPhone Feature You Should Disable If You're Online Dating

Giving someone your phone number before a first date can help you coordinate logistics and keep the chat flowing outside of a dating app. But it can also come with one unintended privacy consequence.

If you’re an iPhone user, your phone number is connected to your contact information, and it may automatically reveal your full name once someone adds you as their new contact. On dating apps, the default is usually first names only –– and many of us prefer to keep it that way until we decide otherwise.

Once someone knows your full name, it’s easier for them to find your exact job, your social media accounts and, in my own case, my LinkedIn profile. Before I turned off this iPhone “name-sharing” feature, I had one date who instantly found my articles after I shared my phone number. He added me as a contact on LinkedIn before we ever met in person. My potential first date had turned into a networking opportunity for him — one more reason why I prefer to stay just a “Monica” until we’ve met in person.

To turn off this feature:

Go to Settings.
Select Messages. From there, you can toggle off name and photo sharing entirely. You can also select your name and edit out your last name.

Or, if you keep the name-sharing feature on, you can select “Share Automatically” and choose between doing this with “Contacts Only” or with the explicit permission of “Ask Always.” If you choose the “Ask Always” option, your iPhone will prompt you before conversations, verifying that you want to share your name and photo with the other person.