Disable This iPhone Feature If You’re Using Dating Apps

Dating online is already difficult. You need to actively search for people that you might find interesting. Even trickier is that you also have to find people who are interested in you.

Chances are you don’t want to spend time worrying about what information people can find about you before you’re comfortable enough to share it with them.

Unfortunately, once you share your phone number with someone, you might actually be sharing a bit more information than you’d like.

The Messages app has a feature that automatically shares your name and contact photo. Once they have your full name, people can use that to find other information about you. For instance, they could see your social media platforms or check who your friends, family, and followers are.

Needless to say, this is data you probably don’t want to share with someone you’ve just met. Fortunately, you can easily change your settings so you don’t share unnecessary information with your contacts.

How to Stop Sharing Your Name and Photo in Messages

Sharing your name might not seem like a lot, but it’s actually enough for people to find out more about you, especially online. Luckily, you can decide who to share this information with by doing the following:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap on Messages.
3. Go to Share Name and Photo.
4. Disable Name & Photo Sharing if you don’t want your iPhone to automatically share your name or picture with your contacts at all. 
5. Or, you can tap on Edit to change your picture to something you don’t mind sharing and then tap Name to change your name to a nickname or something that makes it harder for people to find more information about you.
6. Finally, you can also tap Share Automatically and choose Always Ask instead of Contacts Only. When you use Always Ask, your iPhone will prompt you whenever you start chatting with someone else to make sure you want to share your name and picture with them.

Note that your iPhone won’t automatically share your name and photo with just anybody who texts you. As the settings above indicate, they’ll at least need to be in your contacts. However, since it’s fairly common for many people to add new acquaintances to their contacts — it feels more personal to see a name instead of a phone number —  it’s a good idea to opt for the Always Ask setting if you’re calling or texting people you don’t want to share your full identity with.

Keep Yourself Safe in the Dating World

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people on dating apps who just want to get the better of you, and sadly, some of us don’t find out who they are until it’s too late.

In addition to following the usual tips to stay safe online, changing your settings to stop oversharing your personal information is a quick and easy way to keep your identity private and safe until you’re ready to share it with someone new in your life.