Why Am I Getting Dating Site Ads on My Phone?

Because a dating company paid for the space and an advertising system decided you were a fit. Free apps, games and websites earn money by showing ads, and dating companies buy a great deal of that space to find new members. The system aims them at people by age, location and what they have browsed, searched or tapped. It does not mean anyone is watching you, and it does not mean you are on a list of single men.

You can cut most of it down, and you can use it as a prompt to try an app properly.

Ad networks work from a short list of facts about a phone. Roughly where it is. An age range. The kind of apps installed. The sites and searches it has shown interest in lately. Dating companies ask for men in a certain age range who live in a city, and anyone who fits gets shown the ad.

That is why the ad arrived in the middle of a game or a news page. The app you were using sold the space. The dating company bought it. Neither of them needed to know your name.

A few ordinary actions raise the number.

You looked. Searching for dating advice or reading an article about the apps tells an ad system you are interested in the topic. So does visiting a dating site. More ads follow for a while.

You tapped one. Even a curious tap counts as a signal. Ads of the same kind then appear more.

You live somewhere with a lot of advertisers. Cities and busy areas have more companies bidding, so you see more of everything.

Your age and gender fit. Dating companies pay more to reach some groups than others, and a man in the usual range is often one of them.

You are on a free app. Free apps show more ads than paid ones, because ads are how they earn.

You cannot turn off ads on a free app that runs on them, but you can make them less aimed at you.

Look in your phone's privacy settings for the options about personalized ads and tracking. On an iPhone, that is the Privacy settings, where you can turn off personalized ads and stop apps from asking to track you. On Android, look for Ads in your Google settings and reset or delete your advertising ID. Menu names change with each update, so search the settings for "ads" if you cannot find them.

Inside an ad, there is usually a small menu with a way to hide it or say you do not want to see it. Use that on dating ads and report any that look wrong. Clearing your browser history and cookies also resets some of the signals.

A paid version of an app that removes the ads is the cleanest fix, and Tinder lists hiding ads among the features of Tinder Plus.

A dating ad on your phone does not mean a company has your name, your relationship status or a note that you are lonely. The system sorts phones into broad groups, and yours landed in one that dating companies pay to reach.

It also does not mean your phone has been hacked. Ads are how many free apps earn their money, and a bright dating ad is usually that, nothing darker.

Not every dating ad comes from a real company. Some of the loudest ones are not.

Be careful with ads that promise local singles waiting to meet you. The same goes for ads that show a woman's photo with a name and a distance, or say someone near you has messaged you. Many of those lead to sites that charge for every message or are full of fake accounts. If an ad is vague about who runs the service and what you pay, close it.

If you want to try an app, do not tap the ad. Go to your phone's app store, find the app by name, and read what it says about itself and what it charges.

Treat it as a nudge. If dating ads keep appearing and you have been meaning to try again, you do not need the ad. Pick one or two of the big apps from the store, put a clear photo of your face first, and give each of them two weeks of the same routine.

If you are not interested, adjust your settings, hide the ads that bother you and carry on. Either choice is fine. The ads are a business doing what a business does with a spare screen.