Match Group, the parent company of dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, Match, and others, announced today that every minute, it removes 44 spam accounts on average across its portfolio. Further, nearly 5 million bot and spam accounts have been removed between January and March 2023 — either before gaining access to the platform, or shortly after signup.
The dating app giant has been making considerable efforts to curb spammers — and scammers — recently. In addition to Tinder adding background checks through a partnership with non-profit Garbo in 2022, the app rolled out a new selfie video verification system a few months ago.
With Americans losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year to romance scams, these safety measures are needed; that figure doesn’t account for scammers of different varieties, either. According to Tinder, scammers have evolved to exploit common behaviors like including a social media handle in their bio, which they can use to get users on a third-party site.
Want more sex and dating stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s new weekly After Dark newsletter.
Recently, Tinder changed its Community Guidelines to disallow social handles in bios. The app said its purpose is for personal connections, not business ones — and people shouldn’t be on there to sell or fundraise.
“We are continuously enhancing our spam prevention tools to help make them more effective, while also making investments in machine learning, both which we view as essential for Match Group to help maintain a safer service for our users around the world,“ said Match Group’s director of safety product, Jess Johnson, in a press release. “By implementing a combination of technology, human moderation, and user education to encourage reporting of suspicious activity, we are able to help remove the vast majority of spam at sign up or before a user ever sees it.”
