Men report facing more pressure than women—and more threats of retaliation—to grant access to their locations and online accounts when in a committed relationship, according to a new analysis of data released this summer by Malwarebytes.
The same analysis also revealed that, while men report more regret in sharing their locations, women report less awareness in how their locations can be accessed, particularly through food delivery apps, ride-hailing services, vacation rental platforms, and other location-based tools.
The data from Malwarebytes paints a nuanced portrait of the struggles that men and women face when deciding how much of their digital lives to share with spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and partners. Often, the struggles intersect with parts of modern dating that people have little control over, including how companies track, collect, and share their data, and how easy it is for other people to access that data.
In looking more closely at the research released earlier this year in the report, “What’s mine is yours: How couples share an all-access pass to their digital lives,” Malwarebytes hopes to once again spread awareness and education about secure dating practices in the internet age.
Access our full “Modern Love in the Digital Age” guidance hub below.
Men: More regret, pressure, and threats
Men are going through a loneliness epidemic in America right now.
But even for men in romantic relationships, where companionship should be a salve, other problems emerge. In particular, as Malwarebytes found, these problems include disparate feelings of pressure and regret in sharing their devices, account passwords, and locations.
For example, of partners who shared their location with one another, 36% of men said they’d “felt pressure” to do so, compared with 20% of women who said the same. And a shocking 9% of men who share their account access clarified that such access may be imbalanced, as they agreed: “My partner has threatened me over sharing account access,” compared to 4% of women—a more than two-fold increase. The threats included things like being broken up with, being harmed physically or emotionally, or being shut out and ignored.
Men were also more likely to report a one-sided consent model for how their partners accessed their devices, accounts, and locations (a model that we’re not entirely ready to call “sharing” because of the clearly communicated lack of consent).
When asked about the way in which they “shared” any type of digital and device access, which included smartphones, tablets, computers, online accounts for multiple apps, and location data, 23% of men said “Yes [my partner] has access but I wish they didn’t.” That rate was 12% for women.
Similar disparities arose when men and women answered the same way regarding device access (14% of men compared to 7% of women), social media access (9% of men compared to 4% of women), and access to apps that can share your location (16% of men compared to 9% of women).
But not all location apps are the same, and when asked specifically about apps that are designed to share locations between individuals—such as FindMy on iOS, Find My Device for Google, or third-party tools like Life360—the data revealed the largest discrepancy.
A shocking 400% more men said they only share their locations through those apps “because my partner insists” (8% of men compared with 2% of women).
In the research, men openly shared their feelings on all this, as 14% (compared to 8% of women) agreed: “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t share as much personal account information with my partner.”
In safe and consensual arrangements between couples, a shared location can show up as a little blue dot on a devoted smartphone app.
But for apps that rely on location data to function—like ride-hailing apps, food delivery services, and vacation rental platforms—location “sharing” can feel a lot more like location “leaking.” A shared Airbnb account, for example, could reveal a spouse’s active vacation rental address to another partner logged into the same account. A shared Uber account could reveal ride history, and potentially even a new address, to an ex-boyfriend who never logged out after a breakup. And DoorDash orders could expose when a domestic abuse survivor is at home, so long as their abuser is monitoring the app from the same account.
But these examples, research shows, are not common knowledge, with women showing less awareness than men for every type of account.
Women were less likely to be aware of how their locations could be exposed to another user logged into the same account for vacation rental platforms (68% of women were unaware compared to 49% of men), health and fitness tracking apps like FitBit and Strava (57% of women compared to 43% of men), ride-hailing apps (50% of women compared to 37% of men), and food and grocery delivery apps (49% of women compared to 39% of men).
Women were also more likely to say they were unaware of how the companion apps for many modern vehicles—which can be used to find a car in a large parking lot or to help locate a stolen sedan—can also reveal their location on a shared account (60% of women compared to 41% of men).
This relatively new location-tracking method has caused serious problems for spouses being followed by their exes, and the blame cannot fall on users who are tasked with, as usual, managing even more parts of their lives online.
Shifting perspectives
Data alone never presents a full story, and data that compares men and women can be vulnerable to misinterpretation.
The varying issues facing men and women should not be interpreted as problems of their own making—men cannot be said to regret sharing account access because they have “something to hide,” and women cannot be said to be poorer users of technology because of lower reported awareness in location sharing mechanisms.
If anything, the overlap in responses shows the work to be done.
When 68% of women and 49% of men are unaware of how their locations can be accessed through shared accounts on vacation rental platforms, perhaps this isn’t a problem of user awareness. Perhaps it is a problem of unclear communication and lacking transparency from the largest and most popular apps today.
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