Hinge, the dating app, will be rolling out a new profile validation feature starting next month to combat fake accounts. Dubbed “Selfie Verification,” the feature will prompt users to upload a video of themselves, which the app, with a combination of machine learning and human oversight, will use to confirm they look like the person pictured in their profile. People who complete the process will get a “Verified” badge on their dating profile.
Match Group, parent company of Hinge Submitted Wired, Selfie Verification will be made available to all users in December, according to the first publication to cover the news. “As romance scammers find new ways to defraud people, we are committed to investing in new updates and technologies that prevent harm to our daters,” Hinge spokesperson Jarryd Boyd told the outlet.
The feature is available after Wired Lauren Goode, a writer, wrote about her experiences with Hinge’s many bots. Like many dating apps, the app is full of fake accounts. The real people behind them will often try to scam their matches. For instance, “Pig butchering,” one of the more popular online dating schemes, frequently sees victims tricked into “investing” their money into fake cryptocurrency platforms. As Gizmodo points out, online dating scams aren’t new, but they’ve become more prevalent since the start of the pandemic. The Federal Trade Commission was established in February. Online daters are warnedIt was noted that online dating fraud has caused people to lose a record $547million in 2021.
It’s difficult to know how much Selfie Verification can help Hinge users avoid such scams. Similar features are already used by other Match Group apps like Tinder. On those platforms, users aren’t required to verify their identity, and you still see plenty of fake accounts.
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