{"id":608262,"date":"2023-02-15T07:49:19","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T13:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/15\/dating-apps-crack-down-on-romance-scammers\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T07:49:19","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T13:49:19","slug":"dating-apps-crack-down-on-romance-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/15\/dating-apps-crack-down-on-romance-scammers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dating Apps Crack Down on Romance Scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The dating app<\/span> Tinder changed the way we connect by mainstreaming the swipe: Swipe left to reject; swipe right to see if there\u2019s a spark. Now, in the age of pernicious romance scams, Tinder is going hard on another feature: the block.<\/p>\n

Tinder<\/a>, which is owned by\u00a0Match Group<\/a>, recently said it was introducing a feature that lets users block someone\u2019s profile as soon as it comes up on the app. Previously, Tinder members could only block someone after there was a match and one party subsequently filed a report. Now, blocking can happen right away. Tinder says this is an \u201ceasy way to avoid seeing a boss or an ex\u201d on the app; it\u2019s also a mechanism for blocking malicious accounts before there\u2019s even a chance of swiping right. Another new feature in Tinder, Long Press Reporting, speeds up the process for filing complaints. App users can just press on an offensive or shady message and report bad behavior from there.<\/p>\n

Tinder\u2019s head of trust and safety product development,\u00a0Rory Kozoll, says the new features are part of an initiative to keep users generally safe and make the experience \u201cmore comfortable for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Kozoll also acknowledges that of the various challenges Tinder faces as a platform, dating app spam and scams are the largest problems. \u201cWhen we measure things that happen on our platform, one way is by volume and one is by impact, and we really focus on impact,\u201d Kozoll says. \u201cWe see a lot more spam, but if a long con, a scam, is successful, it\u2019s much more harmful than spam is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tinder is not the only app that\u2019s emphasizing trust and safety in concert with the world\u2019s biggest manufactured love holiday. (One interesting fact: Tinder says the busiest day of the year for the app is not actually Valentine\u2019s Day but the first Sunday after the new year, affectionately known as Dating Sunday.) Earlier this month, Hinge sent out an email to users offering tips for safer dating, adding that the app \u201cwants you to feel excited to meet new people, not worried about romance scams.\u201d Tips include weeding out people who only want to text and not meet in person; avoiding those who say they desperately need money or have a get-rich scheme; and looking for a verified selfie mark, a\u00a0relatively new feature on Hinge<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alec Booker, a spokesperson for Match Group\u2019s Tinder, says these messages to users are part of a broader company educational campaign to \u201cremind daters of the dangers of romance scams and how they can spot and protect themselves from fraudsters.\u201d Tinder, Match, Meetic, and Plenty of Fish, all dating apps within the same group, are also a part of the campaign, in addition to Hinge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romance scams are a growing problem, with the US Federal Trade Commission calling our prolific use of social media apps and the rise of cryptocurrencies \u201ca combustible combination for fraud.\u201d Over the past four years, the FTC has recorded a steady rise in romance scam losses: from $493 million in 2019 to $730 million the following year to over $1.3 billion per year in 2021 and 2022. The Commission notes that because the vast majority of scams aren\u2019t even reported to the government, \u201cthese figures reflect just a small fraction of the public harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the inception of dating apps\u2014really, since the inception of dating\u2014scammers have found ways to exploit people\u2019s vulnerabilities and capture their attention with a legitimate-sounding story or just the right amount of social engineering. But to Kozoll\u2019s point, scams have evolved from quick hits\u2014here, click on this link<\/em>\u2014to long cons that are now often referred to as\u00a0pig-butchering scams<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Michael Steinbach, the head of global fraud detection at Citi and the former executive assistant director of the FBI\u2019s National Security Branch, says that\u2014broadly speaking\u2014fraud has transitioned from \u201chigh-volume card thefts or just getting as much information very quickly to more sophisticated social engineering, where fraudsters spend more time conducting surveillance.\u201d Dating apps are just a part of global fraud, he adds, and high-volume fraud still occurs. But for scammers, he says, \u201cthe rewards are much greater if you can spend time obtaining the trust and confidence of your victim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinbach says he advises consumers, whether on a banking app or a dating app, to approach certain interactions with a healthy amount of skepticism. \u201cWe have a catchphrase here: Don\u2019t take the call, make the call,\u201d Steinbach says. \u201cMost fraudsters, no matter how they\u2019re putting it together, are reaching out to you in an unsolicited way.\u201d Be honest with yourself; if someone seems too good to be true, they probably are. And keep conversations on-platform\u2014in this case, on the dating app\u2014until real trust has been established. According to the FTC, about 40 percent of romance scam loss reports with \u201cdetailed narratives\u201d (at least 2,000 characters in length) mention moving the conversation to WhatsApp, Google Chat, or Telegram.<\/p>\n

Dating app companies have responded to the uptick in scams by rolling out manual tools and AI-powered ones that are engineered to spot a potential problem. Several of Match Group\u2019s apps now use photo or video verification features that encourage users to capture images of themselves directly within the app. These are then run through machine-learning tools to try to determine the validity of the account, rather than letting someone upload a previously captured photo that might be stripped of its telling metadata. (A WIRED report on\u00a0dating app scams from October 2022<\/a> pointed out that at the time, Hinge did not have this verification feature, though Tinder did.)<\/p>\n

For an app like Grindr, which serves predominantly men in the LGBTQ community, the tension between privacy and safety is greater than it might be on other apps, says Alice Hunsberger, who is vice president of customer experience at Grindr and whose role includes overseeing trust and safety. \u201cWe don\u2019t require a face photo of every person on their public profile because a lot of people don\u2019t feel comfortable having a photo of themselves publicly on the internet associated with an LGBTQ app,\u201d Hunsberger says. \u201cThis is especially important for people in countries that aren\u2019t always as accepting of LGBTQ people or where it\u2019s even illegal to be a part of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunsberger says that for large-scale bot scams, the app uses machine learning to process metadata at the point of sign-up, relies on SMS phone verification, and then tries to spot patterns of people using the app to send messages more quickly than a real human might. When users do upload photos, Grindr can spot when the same photo is being used over and over again across different accounts. And it encourages people to use video chat within the app itself as a way to avoid catfishing or pig-butchering scams.<\/p>\n

Kozoll, from Tinder, says that some of the company\u2019s \u201cmost sophisticated work\u201d is in machine learning, though he declined to share details on how those tools work, since bad actors could use the information to skirt the systems. \u201cAs soon as someone registers, we\u2019re trying to understand, \u2018Is this a real person? And are they a person with good intentions?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, AI will only do so much. Humans are both the scammers and the weak link on the other side of the scam, Steinbach says. \u201cIn my mind, it boils down to one message: You have to be situationally aware. I don\u2019t care what app it is, you can\u2019t rely on only the tool itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Lauren Goode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dating app Tinder changed the way we connect by mainstreaming the swipe: Swipe left to reject; swipe right to see if there\u2019s a spark. Now, in the age of pernicious romance scams, Tinder is going hard on another feature: the block.Tinder, which is owned by\u00a0Match Group, recently said it was introducing a feature that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27444,1558,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-608262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crack","8":"category-dating","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}