Given the increasing number of online dating scams, Match Group, the parent company of several online dating platforms, will run an in-app awareness campaign to educate the users.
Tinder, Match, Hinge, Meetic, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and many several apps owned by Match Group will send email notifications and in-app messages to help them learn how to evade a potential dating scam online.
Different Campaigns for Different Apps
Meetic, a French online dating app, and Tinder will send users in-app tips and messages along with common behavior that might point toward a scam.
They’ll suggest users with prompts such as making sure that the profile of a potential match has a verified profile photo, connecting with a match on a video call before meeting them in person, and learning to recognize red flags to identify a potential scammer.
Match believes educating users is key to preventing love fraud in the future.
On the other hand, the users of apps like Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, and OurTime, will get emails and notifications with similar scam-evading tips as Tinder and Meetic.
The global public awareness campaign, as the company calls it, is set to roll out in over 15 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Match Group Will Continue Reminding Users to Stay Vigilant
The awareness campaign is supposed to run throughout the entire of January. However, Match Group intends to continue intermittently sending push messages to users across different apps even after the campaign’s over.
Buddy Loomis, the Senior Director of Law Enforcement Operations and Investigations for Match Group, shared insight into this program with an online news magazine.
Scammers will often play the long game. They want to really capture the victim’s confidence and trust, and they’ll spend a lot of time with them talking back and forth.Buddy Loomis
As per Loomis, it allows scammers to establish a relationship with the victim that makes them feel safe. And when the scammers are fully assured that the victim trusts them, they ask for money under the pretext of wanting the money to pay an urgent bill, ticket, or visa.
Another sign that you may be interacting with a scammer is that they’ll ask you to chat over a third-party platform that’s most likely not being moderated.
Therefore, Match Group has developed a feature that’ll be triggered by certain words in a conversation and send users a safety message through a pop-up. The feature is integrated into all the apps of Match Group.
Romance Scams Can Cost You a Lot More Than You Think
As per a report by the US Federal Trade Commission, romance scams contribute the highest of the total reported losses. Moreover, the number of online dating fraud victims has continuously increased in the past few years.
Apart from the emotional drain, these scams have cost the victims heavy monetary losses.
As per another FTC Report, the reported online date scam victims lost a whopping $547 million to fraudsters in 2021. The Global Anti-Scam Organization Data also shows that the average reported loss due to romance scams in the United States in 2022 was $186,169.
Despite companies like Match Group resorting to developing advanced features to prevent fraud and scams, many people still join online dating platforms only to steal from other users. Buddy Loomis also points out that many victims don’t even report such frauds.
Loomis added that the awareness campaign also aims to remove the stigma of reporting such scams so that users can feel safer and more confident while using their apps.
Match Group also encourages its users to report incidents of fraud and scams on the platform and contact local law enforcement for help.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
Comments