United Kingdom

Mixing politics and dating isn’t always the best idea, but one thing’s for sure: politicians want to encourage young people to vote and be politically active. So what better way to connect with them than on their own turf?

At least, this is the thinking behind UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s latest move. He joined Tinder last month, not to date, but to connect with millennials, who are a target voting market. He met with leading tech companies earlier to try a new approach that would engage young voters.

Reports claim he has joined Tinder to encourage young people to vote in the EU referendum, amid fears many aren’t registered. The plan with Tinder is that Cameron will place advertisements that resemble dating profiles as part of the electoral registration drive.

Does this seem deceptive to people on Tinder who are looking to meet dates, not to engage in politics? Perhaps, but this isn’t the first time dating apps have gotten political.

Earlier this year, Swipe The Vote asked Tinder users 10 questions designed to assess their political preferences for issues like same-sex marriage, immigration and fracking. And when Bernie Sanders supporters on Facebook noticed a trend of Bernie fans looking to meet each other, a new dating site called Bernie Singles was born. Now, there’s even a dating app for Trump opponents called Maple Dating, which offers eligible Canadian matches to Americans who want to leave the country.

So what does all this mean? Are dating apps getting more political? Should dating and politics mix? It’s murky ground, but one thing is for sure. Politicians wanting to capture the attention of young voters have to think outside of normal ad campaigns. And if setting up a dating profile on Tinder works to engage your audience, then why not meet them where they are?

Bumble has gotten in on the political action, too. It now allows its users to declare which Presidential candidate they support, and to filter those who disagree accordingly. JSwipe also has features that let you filter according to political persuasion. And while most daters are willing to date across party lines, they have their limits. The polarization of American politics is getting more personal, where people who are staunch supporters of particular polarizing candidates – like Trump – or specific issues, like those that deal with LGBTQ laws – do not want to date those who disagree with them.

So where does that leave us? Dating culture reflects our shifting values and politics, so it’s only natural that in a controversial Presidential election season, we become more engaged in political discussion. But hopefully after November, you can date a little easier.

For more on this dating app you can read our Tinder review

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Read our review of eHarmony UK for more information about this online matchmaking service.

Reports of online dating-related rape have risen by more than 450 percent in six years, according to the UK's National Crime Agency.

Between 2009 and 2014, the number of reports of serious sexual assaults during first face-to-face meetings following initial contact online rose in the UK from 33 to 184 – a nearly sixfold increase. With around seven million UK residents currently using dating sites, that number is a small fraction of total online encounters – but its growth is still a reminder that safety is an important concern when dating online.

“Early analysis indicates that the online dating phenomenon has produced a new type of sexual offender,” reads the NCA's report on the subject. “These offenders are less likely to have criminal convictions, but instead exploit the ease of access and arm-chair approach to dating websites. This is aided by potential victims not thinking of them as strangers, but someone they have got to know.”

Becaue online relationships tend to progress more quickly than those that begin offline, online daters often have a heightened (and misleading) sense of emotional intimacy. By the time they meet in real life, they falsely believe they are at a more advanced stage of the relationship than they really are. In turn, they are comfortable taking more risks than they normally would and can find themselves in vulnerable situations. That, the NCA posits, is why attacks are most often committed during the first face-to-face meetings.

Looking deeper at the stats, the majority of the victims were women. Eighty-five percent of those reporting rapes were female and 15 percent were men. In spite of safety warnings issued by dating services, police and rape-prevention groups, many opt not to hold their first dates in public spaces. As a result, 71% of the alleged rapes were committed at the victim's or offender's residence.

The National Crime Agency strongly emphasized that the increased risk associated with certain online dating behaviors does not mean blame should be placed on victims.

"A rape victim is never at fault and we do not want the circumstances in which these assaults take place to cause any victim to doubt that," said Sean Sutton, Head of the NCA's Serious Crimes Analysis Section. "Sexual assault is a crime, full stop, and we want victims to feel confident reporting it to the police."

For more information on preventing rape and sexual assault in an online dating context, the NCA recommends visiting Get Safe Online, an initiative supported by the government. The initiative's extenstive guidelines can help daters stay safe when meeting face-to-face.

Looking for a new dating app? It’s not hard to find something besides Tinder – it seems a new dating app launches every week, each with its own particular spin. But the new U.K. launch of dating app Once has got my attention, because it offers something the other apps don’t – real human matchmakers in place of computer algorithms. (We are now going back to basics with online dating.)

Once works like this: once every 24 hours, users will get a hand-picked match to either decline or accept within the next 24 hours. Dates are carefully chosen using several criteria, including interests, looks and personal preferences.

With Once, there is no auto-swiping or endless browsing or location matching like you find on apps like Tinder because the match is personally curated. But it also means as a dater, you have to have patience, because you only get one match a day.  After all, the human matchmakers have a lot of other people to cater to, not just you, and this takes time.

But patience can work in your favor, and often leaves you more interested to tuning in and seeing who your featured match will be. Chances are, you’ll accept more matches when you don’t have an endless array of potential dates to choose from – and because it’s a bit more personal, instead of computer-generated choices. The thinking is that you and your hand-picked date will have some things in common, and the likelihood of relationship success will be greater. The jury is still out on this, as Once hasn’t been on the market long enough to see results.

The dating app recently launched in France, and managed to gain 100,000 users in only a couple of weeks. Once has now launched in the UK, where real-life matchmakers will be picking daters to match in London.

"People are fed up with having just to sit and swipe through hundreds of people in the hope that they might find one person who they like and then start a conversation with," said Jean Meyer, the CEO and founder of Once in an interview with Mashable. He also noted the time-saving aspect of his app: “With Once, we’re taking that responsibility on ourselves, and are handpicking great people for London’s time-starved daters.”

While Once is available in France and the UK on both iOS and Android devices, there is no news yet on the app’s roll-out in other countries. Perhaps this adds to its mystique, to keep daters guessing. Dating Sites Reviews will keep you updated as we learn more.

Single and looking for love in the UK? You're not the only one. Far from it, in fact. According to data from the 2011 Census, the single population is thriving in England and Wales.

An analysis of the data examined how the single population changed over the decade between 2001 and 2011. Over 15.7 million adults (35% of those aged 16 and over) in England and Wales had never been married in 2011, up significantly from 12.5 million (30%) in 2001. In contrast, there were 23 million (51%) ‘not married’ (meaning never married, divorced, or widowed) people in 2011, a rise from 19.4 million (47%) in 2001.

According to the analysis from the UK's Office for National Statistics, the rise in the single population could be the result of a number of factors. One explanation could be the proportional decline in marriage since the 1970s. Another could be the increased social acceptability of remaining single or cohabiting (either never marrying or not re-marrying following divorce or widowhood).

The Office for National Statistics also teased out a few interesting tidbits from the Census to highlight:

• The single population in 2011 was older than in 2001. The single population aged over the course of the decade, perhaps due to the increase in older divorced and widowed people. Of those who had never been married, women were younger than men, likely due to the trend for women to marry men older than themselves.
• Islington had the highest proportion of single people in its population. The majority of the top 10 local authorities with the highest proportions of individuals who were either never married or unmarried were in London. Islington had the greatest concentration of both these groups. The area with the lowest proportion of both never married and not married was East Dorset.
• There were 21 never married men for every 10 never married women in Richmondshire. In some areas, the ratio of single men to single women was drastically imbalanced. Richmondshire was home to 21 never married men to every 10 never married women. Within Richmondshire, Scotton had the largest difference between males and females who had never married: 97 men to every 10 women. There were no local authorities with considerably more women who had never married than men.

The Office for National Statistics also released an map that plots the results of the Census analysis. Use it to search by relationship status, gender, postcode or address to find out which parts of the country are most densely populated with singles. If you're looking for love and having no luck at home, it may be time to consider a move.

The hacking of large company databases for personal and compromising information is on the rise. First it was giant retailer Target, then entertainment studio Sony, followed by a few of the major insurance companies - and it has been reported that as many as 200 companies have been hacked in the last few years, its victims their own customers and employees.

But this week, in perhaps the most personal of the recent data hacks, dating website Adult Friend Finder (a service for those looking for casual friendships and sexual hook-ups), has announced that its customer data has also been breached.

Channel 4 News in the UK has reported that the personal information of 3.9 million of AdultFriendFinder.com’s members was discovered in an online forum for hackers, including users’ sexual preferences, e-mail addresses, dates of birth and, in some cases, whether they were looking to cheat on their spouses. The company has notified law enforcement agencies, but said that no financial or password information seems to have been stolen.

AdultFriendFinder is different from traditional dating sites in that the information people provide is much more personal. When a user signs up, the services asks him/ her to detail his interests and, based on those criteria, matches people for sexual encounters. The site, which boasts 64 million members, claims to have "helped millions of people find traditional partners, swinger groups, threesomes, and a variety of other alternative partners."

So customers who joined the website to anonymously post their sexual preferences for hook-ups might now face being exposed to family members, co-workers, bosses, and even spouses or partners, compromising their personal lives.

One controversial hacker took advantage of the now-exposed data to identify over Twitter and personally name four different men who were using the dating site – including one who was married. Because the data is now accessible to anyone, many more people could be publicly shamed as a result.

According to CNN Money: “The breach was carried out by a hacker who goes by the moniker ROR[RG]. In an online hacker forum, he said he blackmailed Adult FriendFinder, telling the site he would expose the data online unless the company paid him $100,000.”

"Until the investigation is completed, it will be difficult to determine with certainty the full scope of the incident, but we will continue to work vigilantly to address this potential issue and will provide updates as we learn more from our investigation," FriendFinder's statement said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, researchers noted that as awareness of the breach spread on Friday May 22nd, more copies of the files were appearing online, meaning more people potentially had access to the data.