Match Group, the parent company of dating apps Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, Meetic and OurTime, among others, today announced the launch of a new campaign that will introduce in-app messaging and email notifications to give users tips on how to avoid being scammed online.
Tinder and French online dating app Meetic will prompt users for in-app messages with tips and common behaviors to watch out for. Tips include making sure potential matches have their profile photo verified, video chatting with them before meeting in person, and learning to recognize the red flags of scammers.
Meanwhile, Match, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OurTime will all send emails and message notifications to users with the same scam-related tips. Starting today, the global public awareness campaign will launch in more than 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. It will last for the entire month of January, but Match Group told TechCrunch that it will work to continue to deliver the messages to users on a regular basis.
Image Credits: Match Group/Tinder
“Scammers will often play the long game,” Buddy Loomis, senior director of Law Enforcement Operations and Investigations at Match Group, told TechCrunch. “They really want to capture the safety and trust of the victim, and they will spend a lot of time with them talking back and forth… that’s how scammers build a relationship with that person and make them feel safe. [Then] they will ask for money for a child’s medical bill, visa or plane ticket.”
Another red flag is when a scammer wants to chat via third-party platforms, which usually means they want to chat on an app that isn’t as moderated. Match Group recently launched a feature in its apps that sends users pop-up messages with safety tips if certain words are detected in the conversation.
More and more online daters are becoming victims of romance scams, and the number continues to rise. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost a staggering $547 million. The Global Anti-Scam Organization provided data showing the median reported loss in the US was $186,169 in 2022, up from $120,754 in 2021, Match Group wrote in today’s announcement.
While there are many tools that Match Group dating apps use to detect fraudulent and suspicious profiles, there are still people who use these apps to scam and steal from users.
Loomis notes that romance scams and other related incidents are significantly underreported, so hopefully the new message alerts will help with that aspect of the problem as well. “One of the big messages here is to raise awareness about this type of scam and remove the stigma of reporting. We want members to feel safe and to get more in, either proactively, where they haven’t been victimized and haven’t had any loss of monetary value, or afterwards,” she added.
Match Group encourages users to report incidents on the platform they are using, as well as contact local law enforcement.
The company’s new dating-safety campaign comes nearly a year after Netflix released “The Tinder Swindler,” a true-crime documentary that centers on Israeli con man Simon Leviev who tricks women on the dating app. appointments to send you money. Since the documentary premiered in February 2022, Tinder has rolled out several security features, such as Garbo-powered background checks and a feature that prevents bad actors from using the “unmatch” feature to hide from victims.
Source: news.google.com