Are or will there be ways of using those two dating apps on the Librem 5 phone? And if so, will it compromise its security?
I‘ve been using iPhones for more than a decade, and I‘ve got used to those and a handful other apps, and I really wouldn’t want to keep my old phone around just to use those apps.
I recommend keeping your current phone as a “porn phone” and your Librem 5 for everything else. 
Or better: put your phone down and meet real people if you want to find the love of your life. Kids these days… 
That’s what I was afraid of. Is there really no other way? I mean, often you just spend time on this kind of apps without actually looking for somebody, but just out of curiosity about who else is around, what your colleagues are doing etc.
Though I actually already knew that it probably wouldn’t be wise keeping them because of security reasons; sometimes (mostly after updates) they get access to core functionalities like the cam or photo album without me actually giving it to them or being able to revoke it. But still, it’s just like reding the daily newspaper… 
I haven’t used those apps - do they have websites, or are they app-only? Websites will work, apps will not.
There are efforts to enable running Android apps on Linux (like anbox), but those are not at a mature, fully functional stage yet.
Since those apps don’t have websites things like anbox are exactly what I‘m looking for. So it’s either keeping a second phone or anbox. Is it safe though?
I’m not sure what you mean by safe in this context. Anbox claims to isolate/sandbox things, so if implemented correctly, it would isolate those apps from the rest of your system. But of course, you are giving the companies behind those apps at least some information about you when you sign up, so you aren’t safe from having that information stolen in data breaches or just outright sold for profit by the companies themselves.
I just don’t want the apps to gain access to the rest of the system, them having some of the data from the signing up process is fine with me. So anbox would be a good solution, and since it’s going to be a while until the release of Fir there might be even some functionality improvements of that app until then. Thanks a lot for your help!
Are you really OK with the PRC government possibly capturing and documenting your activities in this area?
Grindr is 100% owned by a “company” in China. (Although they’re allegedly looking for a buyer.)
You are giving the company a lot more than that. You are telling the company (implicitly) who’s hot and who’s not. You may be sharing with the company any online dialogue that you have with someone who is hot, and the fact of the dialogue itself.
These are very personal parts of your life, exactly the kind of thing that you wouldn’t necessarily choose to share with every random on the internet, or have recorded for posterity. However maybe the existence of these services says that people these days care less about this than they used to.
As an app-based online service, safety comes in two parts 1. what the app does 2. what the service provider does. (Apparently the former is more of a concern for the person who started this topic.)
For some such apps - but maybe not for these two apps - I wonder whether it is better to run Anbox effectively as an emulator on a desktop / laptop and keep the Android app right away from your phone - so you could, for example, have a container (Anbox) within a container (VM).
Firstly, you’ve all been programmed since birth so they already know who’s hot and who’s not. The question visitors to those sites should be asking themselves now is; Who’s human and who’s not ? Tee hee, but I’m pretty sure the catfish are still real
Culturally, I’m agree with a lot of the opinions expressed here (as I tend to distrust centralized services); however, I think there’s a crucial piece that makes the Librem 5 a key element of the original inquiry. If there’s ANY phone that a person would want to use for services like these, where one is able to access the taboo a tad easier, it would be a L5. No doubt. Totally valid question. And I hope it turns out in the affirmative even if I have zero interest in those services.
Hi there, I doubt tinder will be making a Linux-version and they don’t provide a web-app, so let’s assume you get it to run properly via Anbox. Will it be secure?
Well, that depends on what you mean by secure. It sure won’t insert you any viruses. However it will work as intended, and Tinder has access to your microphone, your camera and your location. So they can contribute to a location database as described here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html (a recommended read anyway) and share that data with whomever. Or they could listen in to your conversations at work. Is that secure? It might be just the way the tinder app is supposed to work.
(UPDATE: in case you believe apps don’t do that: in Summer 2018 an app of the spanish soccer league was found to always be listening in as to detect illegal (ie unlicensed) soccer screenings in pubs, articles in spanish or german )
You might also have agreed to not sue them (https://www.androidauthority.com/tinder-terms-of-use-sue-867428/)
P.S. A quick check shows 12 trackers within the tinder app, and 23 permissions needed to run. So when you run tinder the app, Android privacy issues are the least of your worries 
use-sue > sue-use … epic rap battles of the 2020s … 
This is exactly what bothers me, and by secure I mean whether I would be in control of granting the app permissions to access mic, cameras, files, GPS etc. or not. I want to decide if I want to grant them access at all, and also when and for how long I want them to have it. Because right now on my iPhone they sometimes have access without me even granting it to them, or they keep on having it after I have revoked it in the settings.
Outgoing connections could be handled with a firewall, no? There used to be one for a jailbroken iOS long ago, Firewall IP, but now there is none anymore.
For me that’s one more reason for switching over to Linux.
#1, I guess, because 2-4 are technically compliments, more so than #1, and #5 sounds more philosophical. Why do you ask?
For sure - but this is everything that is wrong with closed source. If you ever grant a closed source app any permission, even if only for one run of the app before revoking afterwards, you don’t know precisely what it did with that permission while it had it - and you will never know.
So a fully open source environment can tie itself up in knots trying to control a closed source app that runs within it.
As Anbox for Librem 5 doesn’t exist yet, noone can say for sure what controls will exist, let alone whether those controls will be to the satisfaction of any given individual customer.
For high-demand apps, maybe someone will reverse engineer the online interaction with the server and provide an open source version of the app. That is about as good as it will get for a service that is not substitutable.
Hmm, I guess I‘ll still have to look into this whole topic once more. Because if Anbox is even not available for L5 yet (and maybe might never be?), then L5 would be missing some of the social media functions that make smartphones in general so attractive. If it was just for the occasional phone call or texting an SMS, an old phone would be sufficient.
Well, but at least there are ways of using WhatsApp on Linux, no? Because we even use that messenger for work related communication here in Germany, and it would be nearly impossible to convince others to switch to a compatible alternative. The pull effect is still too strong atm.
Though I do already begin to realise that the switching over would require an adjustment in my mindset, which is required to make some changes in my habbits.
No officially sanctioned way unless, I believe, you have an android with the app running that run this web interface thingy (not a WhatsApp user, so I don’t know it really).
It is not purisms fault, but due WhatsApps’ decision to not make a client or open API available… and yes, that is exactly what makes convincing people hard. There is a reason it is called walled garden.