A new dating website, “OxShag,” aimed at offering University of Oxford students a “casual shag,” has sparked outrage among the student body. The site has raised data protection concerns for using student information without consent and has since been reported to University of Oxford IT Services.
Prior to a recent change, the dating site worked by asking users to input their Oxford email addresses, and then selecting up to 20 people they’d like to “shag” from a dropdown menu. Privacy concerns arose after the names and colleges of everyone who is on the University of Oxford internal email system appeared on the OxShag database. This included all students and tutors, as well as some mystifying names, including “MCR Bike,” or “Gardens.”
The information on this database is available within the public domain on the “Searching University of Oxford” website. However, this use of the data is forbidden under section 8(h) of the Ownership, Liability and Use terms which states that it is forbidden to “store personal data derived from the website.”
This format sparked anger among the student body, with one student telling Cherwell: “What’s so insidious about this situation is the layers of danger there are. This is a public site with the information of all students and staff, which includes freshers who are still minors, people belonging to the asexual or religious communities (I myself am Muslim), past victims of sexual assault now brought into the sphere of their abusers, and staff members (as if encouraging student-teacher relationships is ever a good idea). The thought of people having seen my name and imagined me in a sexually compromising position has left me feeling deeply violated and uncomfortable.”
OxShag told Cherwell: “I didn’t realise people would take issue with having their names and colleges listed, but this was my bad, and I apologise for the oversight. After I received complaints I immediately took the website down and reworked the structure of it so that people’s names aren’t publicly available.”
OxShag have changed to an “opt in” system, where participants first enter a “sign up” stage where they are encouraged to enter potential suitor’s Oxford’s email address. That person is then sent a “generic email” letting them know that someone has requested they sign up. Then, the participant can select up to 20 people from those who have signed up.
After the matching deadline, the site will then notify participants of how many matches they received. The site will only send out notifications of successful matches, so non-mutual matches will not be disclosed. Participants must then pay a fee of £1 (reduced from £3) to receive the names of mutual matches, which are set to be sent out on Valentine’s day.
Some students have insisted that the change has not gone far enough. Another student told Cherwell: “Even though they’ve updated the website so you can only see names of people who have opted in, that information was still shared originally without our knowledge or consent and that could be leaked by the creator.”
Furthermore, the current system could still be a threat to data privacy. For example, a potential data breach could occur if the data was accessed by an unauthorised third party. This is a real concern for some students given that at present, the identity of the creator of OxShag is unknown.
One distressed student told Cherwell: “OxShag is inherently a nightmare in multiple forms. Not only is it a GDPR nightmare, because one sole person has claimed to gather a digital empire, and then use it against its students, but it is also a welfare problem. None of the students gave their consent to this forum, and it is cruel to profit off of this in this way. It feels manipulative.”
Despite the GDPR concerns, the creator has outlined the ways in which data will be used on the OxShag website: “I (the creator) have access to all selections. I need this to match people together. However, the matching process is done with code and I will not individually look at who anyone selects. Your data is stored in a Google Drive and will not be shared with anyone. All information will be deleted once Oxshag has finished.”
Image Credit: oxshag.com
