Match Group (MTCH) CEO Bernard Kim just gave an unconventional response to the epidemic of customers getting scammed on the company’s dating apps, which include Tinder, Match.com and Hinge in a new interview with CBS News.
Even though he claimed that he has “empathy” for the customers who fall victim to romance scams on his apps, he also said that “things happen in life.”
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“Look, I mean, things happen in life,” said Kim in an interview with CBS News. “That’s really difficult. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for things that happen, but I mean, our job is to keep people safe on our platforms; that is top foremost, most important thing to us.”
Romance scams are on the rise, and they come with a heavy price. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed that roughly 70,000 people reported a romance scam in 2022, and that these scams have cost Americans $1.3 billion in losses.
In 2019, Match Group faced a lawsuit from the FTC for allegedly using “fake love interest advertisements to trick hundreds of thousands of consumers into purchasing paid subscriptions on Match.com.”
The company allegedly sent nonsubscribers notices, such as “You caught his eye,” to inform them that another user on the app had expressed interest in them. The lawsuit claims that these messages came from “accounts the company had already flagged as likely to be fraudulent.”
The OkCupid application is demonstrated for a photograph on an Apple Inc. iPhone in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 4, 2017.
It also alleges that 25% to 30% of Match.com members use the app to “perpetrate scams, including romance scams, phishing schemes, fraudulent advertising, and extortion scams.”
Match Group argued the FTC’s claim saying that the company was not legally responsible for the scams on its platforms due to the Communications Decency Act, which protects online publishers. The judge dismissed most of the FTC’s claims in 2022, and Match Group avoided a $844 Million fee.
Since the lawsuit was filed, Match Group has taken steps to beef up its protection of customers on its dating apps.
In February, Tinder, which is owned by Match Group, began requiring customers to submit a video selfie and a valid Driver’s License or Passport in order to gain a blue checkmark verification on their profile.
Tinder will use those items to “check to see whether the face in the video selfie matches both the photo on the ID” and will verify the date of birth, according to a press release.
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