Bumble drops Facebook login requirement

The week after Mark Zuckerberg testified in front Congress, Bumble is announcing that it will no longer require that users have a Facebook account to log in. The popular women-first dating app is set to institute the change to its registration process tomorrow.

Facebook has long been a prerequisite for signing up for the service, along with competitors like Tinder, designed to help verify identities, offer common friends and speed up registration. But fallout from Facebook’s most recent data sharing scandal has left plenty of users wary of the service and helped convince Bumble’s creators that it’s time for an update.

“Many of our users and prospective users asked for an alternative registration method,” Bumble VP Louise Troen said in an interview with Wired. “As always, empowering our users to make connections is our number one priority and we wanted to continue to ensure our users felt safe while doing this.”

Bumble’s privacy page notes a laundry list of information the service “may collect” via Facebook. “If you register or login to the App using your Facebook account, you are authorizing us to access certain Facebook account information,” the TOS reads, “including information you make available via Facebook, your friends list, relationship status, current location and those friends you have in common with other Bumblers.”

The new process being introduced later this week will let users sign up using only their phone number for verification. While Facebook’s recent privacy concerns may not have had a tremendous impact on its user base, Bumble is likely to be one of several high-profile services rethinking its relationship with the social network

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