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Dating app scams are an embarrassing and costly scheme, usually perpetrated by people pretending to be someone else using stolen or AI-generated photos. To curb the impersonators, Tinder is now testing mandatory facial-recognition scans for new accounts.
As Axios reports, Tinder parent company Match Group tested this "Face Check" feature in Colombia and Canada, but is now trying it out in US. It arrives on Monday, but only in California to start, "due to its size, demographics and strong online safety and privacy laws," Axios says. The company will observe how users respond before rolling it out more widely.
New users in California will be required to take a short selfie video while signing up. Once uploaded, Tinder will run a biometric face scan to see if the face matches the profile photos, if those photos on multiple accounts, and determine if the user is real or an AI-generated persona.
Once the checks are done, the user will receive a verification badge on their profile, and their selfie video will be deleted. The dating app, however, will store an encrypted face map of the user to ensure no duplicate profiles are created in the future.
Tinder has been using video selfies as a verification tool since 2020, but they weren’t mandatory. Face Check differs from the existing ID Check, which verifies a user through government IDs. Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Tinder’s parent Match Group, tells Axios Face Check is another "identity assurance option" to confirm that someone is real.