Archiving my OKCupid Data

August 30, 2023

Last Updated

September 7, 2023

I recently realized I used OKCupid as far back as 2015. There should be conversations with friends who are no longer alive, messages from me when I was much less formed, and things that led to formative events in my life. Let's see if I can get the data.

TL;DR

I successfully requested an export through OKCupid's support team.
Chat history was 1-sided, and only 5 years of history. After asking for more, I was given the entire 6.5 years of history.
Login history went back 6.5 years, to account creation date

Access Request Export

According to their Privacy Policy they fulfill right to access requests. I do not live somewhere with laws regarding this, but I put in a support ticket anyway.

The privacy policy and help page does not have a special request for this. I made a generic "Contact Us" request with category "Other" and asked to export chat history, browsing history, and login times.

I was asked to provide a copy of my government photo ID and then they started the export.

The export looked like a generic export and not one based on what I asked for in my support ticket. I ended up getting chat history, login times, device history, answered questions, search filters, purchase history, and other information about my profile (see the sample below). I also see keys in the export like "reportType": "DSAR", and "isSenderOnly": true , so there's definitely the option to get different information.

Sample output of export

{
  "userInfoReport": {
    "id": "5555555555555555555",
    "reportType": "DSAR",
    "voteCounts": {
      "votesCast": 500,
      "likesCast": 500,
      "votesReceived": 500,
      "likesReceived": 500,
      "matches": 500
    },
    "email": "xxx@gmail.com",
    "username": "xxx",
    "phoneNumber": "xxx",
    "loginCount": 500,
    "joinDate": 1693299565000,
    "lastLogin": 1693299565000,
    "ipAddress": "xxx",
    "birthdate": 1693299565000,
    "gender": "",
    "orientation": "Other",
    "age": 28,
    "education": "Attended",
    "schools": "",
    "occupation": "Undefined",
    "job": "--",
    "location": "xxx",
    "status": "Active",
    "selfieVerifiedStatus": 0,
    "accountPaidLevel": "NOT_PAID",
    "registrationLocation": "",
    "essays": [{
      "title": "My self-summary",
      "text": "xxx",
      "date": 1650830449000
    }],
    "essaysHistorical": [],
    "lastGeolocation": {
      "latitude": "41.0000000",
      "longitude": "-80.000000",
      "date": 1599491366000
    },
    "loginHistoryAggregate": [{
      "date": 1693267200000,
      "ip": "xx.xx.xx.xx",
      "count": 2
    }],
    "messageThreadsPaged": {
      "pageInfo": {
        "hasMore": true,
        "after": "2"
      },
      "data": [{
        "type": "Message Thread",
        "messages": [{
          "from": "5555555555555555555",
          "to": "0",
          "date": 1651836433000,
          "body": "xxxx message text",
          "attachments": "",
          "mmsUrl": null
        }]
      }],
      "isSenderOnly": true
    },
    "photos": [{
      "id": "2259404591077287153",
      "url": "xxx",
      "status": "User Picture Active",
      "uploadDate": 1574398524000,
      "caption": "xxx",
      "isSelfieVerified": false,
      "selfieVerifiedDate": null
    }],
    "purchases": [{
      "id": "12534035755645328131",
      "product": "A-List subscription (via acct level)",
      "eventType": "Changed",
      "transaction": "lost subscription",
      "paymentType": "Credit card",
      "charged": "",
      "date": 1526695256000,
      "comments": "userid 5555555555555555555 lost feature 10001"
    }],
    "questions": [{
      "id": "72086",
      "text": "xxx",
      "answer": "Yes",
      "acceptableAnswers": ["Yes", "No"],
      "importance": "irrelevant",
      "date": 1652205239000,
      "comment": null,
      "commentDate": null,
      "isPublic": true
    }],
    "searchFilters": {
      "ageMin": 50,
      "ageMax": 50,
      "genderTags": [],
      "genderFilter": "Everybody",
      "relationshipType": ["Short-term dating", "Hookup", "New friends", "Long-term dating"],
      "distance": "25 mi"
    },
    "selfieVerificationHistory": [],
    "signupUserAgent": "OKCA 8.1.3",
    "thirdPartyIntegrations": [{
      "name": "facebook",
      "accessToken": "xxx",
      "isActive": true
    }],
    "userDevices": [{
      "hardwareId": "xxx",
      "hardwareVersion": "xxx",
      "lastUse": 1693195008000
    }]
  }
}

Chat history was less interesting. It was 1-sided. The other person's messages are not included and the "to" field is set to "0" so there's no info on who it was with. It is threaded though so I might be able to discern conversation partner. While it only goes back to 2018, I did notice a "hasMore": true, in the field so there might be more to ask support for. This is contrary to me observing the frontend API which only returns around 14 conversations with "hasMore": false,, most likely because I deactivated my account and they show only recent things after that event to prevent overwhelming users?

I ended up asking support for more message history. It took a couple of days but I was given a second data export containing all 1-sided conversations back to account creation. Yay!