How to read your Tinder data export: what data.json contains, and what it cannot tell you

The advice is everywhere: before you appeal, before you write to anyone, download your data. It is good advice, and it is usually the last thing the person giving it explains. So you request the export, unzip the file, and find a wall of text written for a computer. This guide covers what is in there, which parts to read, which part to cut out, and the questions the file cannot answer however carefully you read it.

One honest note first. We sell a service that uses this file, and we say where at the end. The reading itself needs a text editor and twenty minutes.

What is actually in the ZIP

Tinder’s help article Requesting a copy of your personal data (updated Tuesday 14th July 2026) says the folder may hold an index.html file, a viewer for your browser, and “a structured, machine-readable version of your data in JSON format”, which is data.json. The exports this guide describes also carried a folder of profile photos. Tinder lists eight categories a download “may include”: account and profile information, preferences and settings, photos and other media, messaging activity, swipe and match activity, purchase and subscription information, connected services such as Spotify, and usage and technical data. If yours has less in it, do not assume something went wrong. Tinder says the data “may vary depending on the way you have used Tinder”.

A banned account can ask. The same article says “a user who’s been banned or suspended” can request data through the Download My Data tool, and that anyone who can no longer access their account can use Tinder’s privacy request form instead. The steps, and what to do if the banned login will not open the tool, are in how to get your data from Tinder after a ban. Tinder says the download link arrives “within a few days” and does not say how long it stays live, so download it the day the email arrives. Then keep the ZIP. If you later ask Tinder for the fuller file through a formal access request, this download is the baseline you compare it against. If the ban is more than six months old, Tinder ban older than 6 months explains why asking early matters.

How to open data.json

Any text editor opens it: TextEdit on a Mac, Notepad on Windows, or a code editor such as VS Code or Notepad++ if you have one. Right-click the file, choose Open With, pick the editor. It is one long block of text, often thousands of lines. Nothing is broken. That is what a JSON file looks like.

If the raw text puts you off, double-click index.html instead. It shows the same data in your browser, with headings and tables. The viewer is easier for a first look; the editor is better for searching or removing a section.

JSON has a few shapes. Curly brackets { } wrap an object, a set of named fields. Square brackets [ ] wrap a list. The top of data.json is one big object whose fields are the sections. In the exports this guide describes they are User, Usage, Purchases, Messages and Photos; Tinder does not promise that shape, so if yours has other names, read those. Search for the section name in quotes, for example "Usage", to jump straight to it.

Reading Usage: the day it went quiet

This is the section that answers the question most people opened the file to ask. Usage is a set of daily counters, named swipes_likes, swipes_passes, matches, messages_sent, messages_received and app_opens in real exports and in the two open-source parsers that read this format. Each is a list of dates, and each date carries a number. There is also a daily advertising_id, covered below.

The plain way to read it is to line up two counters by date. Find swipes_likes and note the days you were active. Then find matches on the same days. On a normal account the two move together, roughly. What you are looking for is the day they stop: likes still going out, and matches sitting at zero. That date is the closest thing to a timestamp you will get for “something changed”.

A counter is not a verdict, though. Zero matches after zero likes means you stopped swiping, not that anything happened. A slow fade over weeks is different from a hard stop, and only the hard stop is worth building a story around. A single quiet week is inside ordinary variance for most people. If you see a clean cliff, write the date down. If you see a gentle slope, read the shadowban guide first, because most gentle slopes are not penalties. To be thorough, copy the two lists into a spreadsheet and scroll. Ten minutes turns a feeling into a date.

The advertising_id line

Usage carries a daily advertising_id. This is a device-level advertising identifier, the kind your phone hands to apps for ad measurement. Do not read more into it than that. It does not say whether Tinder linked your account to another one, and this guide will not claim to know what Tinder does with it internally. What it shows is that a device-level identifier sits in your own file, which is why Usage is one of the two sections to keep intact in a linked-accounts case. If the value changes on certain dates, note them. A new phone or an ad-ID reset in your phone’s settings would each explain a change.

What to look for in User

User is the profile and account section: what Tinder holds about the account itself rather than what you did with it. Its contents vary between exports, so treat the list below as things to look for, not things you are guaranteed to find.

• The account creation date. The most useful line in the file for an appeal. It establishes how long the account existed before anything happened to it.
• The phone number and email on file. Check they are the ones you think they are. Many linked-accounts confusions start with an old number or a forgotten second email.
• Verification-related entries, if present. Some exports carry entries relating to photo or identity verification; some do not. If yours does, the dates matter, particularly if matches collapsed shortly after a verification step. Do not invent a link between the two. Note the dates and let the sequence speak for itself.
• Profile details. Bio, age, location settings. Rarely decisive, but re-read the bio with a cold eye. An off-platform handle or link in it is the kind of thing that gets flagged, and it is better to know before an appeal than after.

Purchases lists subscriptions and boost use with dates. Not needed for a ban question, but if you are chasing a refund for a subscription that ran past a ban, it is your receipt.

Deleting the Messages section before you send the file

Messages is a list of your matches, each under an anonymised match ID, holding the messages you sent: fields named to, from, message and sent_date. The text of what people sent you is not in the export. Received messages appear only as the daily messages_received count in Usage.

Even so, this section holds half of other people’s conversations, by reference, and nothing in a ban or linked-accounts case needs it. Remove it before the file goes to anyone, including us. Here is how, in a text editor.

1. Make a copy of data.json first. Keep the original untouched in the ZIP. Edit the copy.
2. Find the key. Search for "Messages" with the quotes. You will land on a line reading "Messages": [, the opening bracket of the list.
3. Select from that opening bracket to its matching closing bracket. In VS Code or Notepad++, click just inside the square bracket and the editor highlights its partner. In a plain editor, scroll until the indentation steps back out to the level of the section names, where the list closes with a ]. Delete everything between and including the two brackets, plus the "Messages": label.
4. Keep the file valid. Sections are separated by commas, and there is no comma after the final one. If you removed the last section, delete the comma before it. If you removed a middle section, leave one comma between its neighbours. Save the copy.
5. Check it. Open the edited copy in a browser tab, or in VS Code, which underlines a syntax error in red. If it opens without complaint, you are done.

If that is more than you want to do to a file you do not fully understand, send it as it is and ask the recipient, in writing, to delete the Messages section on receipt and confirm they have.

What to keep and what to skip

Keep the original ZIP untouched, and keep it beyond the case. Keep every day of Usage, not a screenshot of the interesting week: the counters are only worth anything as a contrast between before and after.

What the export cannot tell you

Read this section twice, because it is where most people’s expectations are wrong. The download is a self-service copy of a subset of what Tinder holds. It is not the file.

Specifically, data.json does not contain moderation records, enforcement flags, report counts or reasons. It contains no record of a decision to link your account to another one. And it has no shadowban marker, because nothing in it describes how your profile is ranked or shown. If you searched the file for the word “ban” and found nothing, that is not evidence of a clean record. The export was never built to carry that information.

The same applies the other way. A clean User section does not mean nothing is on file. An unchanged advertising_id does not mean your device was never associated with another account. The cliff in Usage tells you when, not what. Reading the export well gets you a date, a set of account facts and a device identifier. It does not get you the platform’s reasoning, and anyone who claims to read that out of data.json is guessing.

What the platform holds beyond the download is what a formal access request under GDPR Article 15 is for. That is a written demand, not a button in the app, with a statutory clock: one month to answer, extendable by two. It will not be complete. Tinder’s privacy policy says it can refuse what could infringe “trade secrets or intellectual property or the privacy or other rights of someone else”, and the European Data Protection Board’s access guidelines (Example 37) let a platform keep back how its detection works while still giving “the information that led to the restriction of the account”. Even a partial answer, though, shows what a ban is anchored to, which the export never can. The data-rights guide walks through the request, and the difference between access and erasure.

What to do with it

The export was step one. Step two is a short list.

1. Write down three things from the file. The account creation date from User. The date in Usage where matches stopped while likes continued, if there is one. And whether the advertising_id changed near that date. Those facts belong at the top of any appeal, complaint or access request, because a reader can check them against their own systems.
2. Send an access request, not an erasure request. Ask for what the export does not contain: reports against the account, moderation flags and labels, any record linking the account to other accounts or devices, and the identifiers used. The one-month clock starts when they receive it.
3. Keep the export as the baseline. When the formal answer comes back, compare the two. A device identifier or a creation date that appears in one and not the other is a question to put in writing.

Two published cases show where a data request can lead. In the Irish Data Protection Commission’s MTCH case from 2022, Tinder found eleven other accounts tied to the man’s device ID, and offered to delete his personal data so he could open a new account. That is a linked-accounts problem handled through the data rather than around it. It began as an erasure request, not an access request, and the offer came once the regulator put the complaint to Tinder. The founder’s own Tinder ban, went the other way round: an access request with a demand for human review, and Tinder’s Data Protection Office lifted the ban 31 days after it was sent. Two cases, not a rate. The device-tracking guide covers what identifiers a platform can use, and why working around them ends badly.

The paid version of this is the Data Route: $149 flat, the Article 15 request drafted, sent in your name, the deadline chased, Tinder’s answer explained in writing, then the clean-slate request and your data regulator if they ignore the deadline. Comparing your own export against that answer is an add-on at intake. Send only data.json, with the Messages section removed. We make no promise about matches, ever, because nobody outside the company can.

Questions people actually ask

Does the Tinder data export show if I am shadowbanned?

No. There is no shadowban marker, ranking score or visibility field anywhere in data.json. What the export can show is the day your matches stopped while your likes continued, in the Usage counters. That is a date, not a diagnosis. Read the shadowban guide for how to tell a penalty from ordinary variance.

Does the export show why I was banned?

No. Moderation records, report counts, enforcement flags and reasons are not part of the self-service download. For those you need a formal access request under GDPR Article 15, which has a one-month clock and may still be answered only in part: Tinder can hold back what would reveal someone else’s data, trade secrets or intellectual property, such as how its detection works. Even a partial answer shows what the ban is anchored to.

Can I see the messages other people sent me?

Not their text. The Messages section holds the messages you sent, listed under an anonymised ID for each match, with the fields to, from, message and sent_date. What you received appears only as a daily count, messages_received, in the Usage section.

What is the advertising_id in Usage?

A device-level advertising identifier, recorded per day. It is the kind of identifier a phone hands to apps for ad measurement. The export does not say what Tinder does with it, and neither will we. It is worth keeping intact, and worth noting if its value changes on a date close to when your matches stopped.

Is it safe to send my data.json to someone?

Send it with the Messages section deleted, and keep the original ZIP yourself. User and Usage are the sections a ban or linked-accounts question needs. If editing the file is beyond what you want to do, send it unedited and ask the recipient in writing to delete Messages on receipt and confirm that they have.

My download link has expired. Can I still use the file?

If you already unzipped it, yes, the link only governs the download. If you never downloaded it, request the export again and save it the day the email arrives. Tinder does not say how long the link stays live, so do not wait. Keep the ZIP beyond the case, because it is the baseline for anything Tinder later sends you.

The export looks clean. Can I just make a new account?

No, and the export cannot tell you it is safe to. The download carries no linked-account decisions and no enforcement flags, so a clean-looking file says nothing about what the platform holds. A new account on the same device is the pattern linked-accounts enforcement exists to catch. Ask for the full file first, through an access request, and act on what it shows.

Should I send an erasure request as well as downloading my data?

Not first, and not while a case is open. Erasure does not, on its own, remove a moderation record, and it can take your evidence and your login with it. The request that helps is an access request. Erasure, if you still want it, is end-of-case hygiene, and the data-rights guide explains the difference in full.