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How do you know if that cute guy you matched with on your dating app is really who he says he is? The hard truth is – you don’t, at least until you meet in person.

One consistent issue with online dating (and social media in general) has been users setting up fake profiles. Often, these fake profiles are used for catfishing – or targeting and scamming other users or members of the same service. Online dating site Badoo has decided to address the problem with its own newly-launched photo and profile verification system.

Many online daters in the U.S. have heard of OkCupid or Tinder, but they haven’t heard of Badoo. Despite this, it is a global giant in the online dating industry with 300 million registered users in over 190 countries, bigger than all of the popular U.S. dating services – even Tinder. Plus, the company has 400,000 signups every day, mostly in Europe and South America.

According to Badoo, the new verification system will hopefully eliminate catfishing from the service altogether. When a new user signs up, they are asked to verify their profile. Badoo then sends them a request for a photo – and the new user has to perform a specific gesture that Badoo assigns. (The company notes that it is a unique and specific gesture, not a common one like a “thumbs-up.”) Badoo will then make sure it's you by looking at the other photos on your profile along with the unique pose. You may even be asked to do another pose. The whole process takes less than a minute since the company has 5,000 moderators worldwide checking them out, so it’s pretty efficient.

If a user chooses not to verify a photo, they could be excluded from other users’ views who only want to connect with verified profiles.

The new verification system is another step in Badoo’s strategy to appeal to female online daters. With the verification system, Badoo intends for female daters to feel more secure in signing up and using the service, since they are often the ones who are targeted with fake profiles and messages.

This seems to be a strategic move. The company recently bought popular female-centric dating app Lulu, where women rate the men they date for other women, as a referral or warning system, depending on how you look at it. Badoo’s head Andrey Andreev hired Lulu’s founder Alexandra Chong as President of Badoo, and the company intends to set up a U.S. office to attract more of a presence in the States. According to TechCrunch Andreev also has invested in Bumble, another female-friendly dating app.

The new version of Badoo is available in the iTunes store, Google Play, and the Windows store.

Who amongst us can honestly say they have never agonized over an online dating photo? It's a rite of passage in 2016: take a photo, edit it, post it, rethink it, delete it, start again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you've ever struggled to determine which of your many (many) selfies belong on your dating profile, Coffee Meets Bagel now offers a solution. From now on, CMB users can A/B test photos by uploading two options and letting other users vote for the best one.

The new feature is called Photo Lab. When clicked, a screen that says “Put your best face forward” is shown. Hit the “+” button to add two photos from your profile, from Facebook, or from your smartphone’s photo gallery. When other users have had time to vote and your report is ready, you’ll receive a notification. The report is unlocked by using “beans,” Coffee Meets Bagel’s in-app currency.  

Of course, Photo Lab also allows you take the opposite role and give other users photo feedback. You'll see a familiar Hot Or Not-style interface and can vote by clicking on the photo you prefer. After you’ve voted, you’ll see a percentage that indicates how other users rated the same two pictures and will earn beans for your efforts.

It will come as a shock to no online dater that pictures are one of the most important parts of your profile. Coffee Meets Bagel polled singles and found that 54% pass on prospective dates for picture-related reasons. The most common offenses include blurry images and the so-called “Where’s Waldo” pics that feature so many people that the profile owner is unidentifiable.

“Surprisingly, a large percentage of online daters have a hard time when it comes to choosing which photo to use on their profile,” Dawoon Kang, co-founder of Coffee Meets Bagel, told TechCrunch. Yet they “get no feedback whatsoever on which profile photo actually works best.”  

This isn't the first time Coffee Meets Bagel has tried to give its users a leg up in the search for love. The site and mobile app already offer premium features to help singles determine whether their profile is working. CMB members with enough beans can find out how they rank on the site and get feedback on the reasons matches say yes.  

Coffee Meets Bagel hopes the new feature will further cement its reputation as a platform for serious dating. CMBl is for “singles looking for real relationships – not browsing, not entertainment, not hook ups,” said Kang.

Watch a quick video on Photo Lab here.

Tinder has released a new update for users to help improve the photo selection process and enhance messaging options.

The update is a result of one of Tinder’s most requested features: the ability to upload profile photos to the app directly from your camera roll. The old version of the app pulled photos from Facebook only, which didn’t give users much flexibility. Instead of being able to pull photos from their camera roll specifically for the dating app, they would have to post photos to their Facebook profile (and advertise their flirtatious Tinder selfies to all their friends), or try to get around the problem by creating a fake Facebook profile (not so easy to do), or adding “private” photo albums.

Now, users can pull photos directly from their camera rolls, bypassing Facebook. And to enhance this feature, Tinder has made cards and photos larger on the screen.

While this comes as a relief to many Tinder fans, another issue has been created. Tinder already has a challenge with some users creating fake profiles to scam other users, but the fact that every user has to tie their account to a real Facebook account made things a bit more secure. Now with the latest update, it’s much easier to post fake photos, so there might be a backlash with the current security measures.

Co-founder of Scamalytics Dan Winchester noted that this is good news for scammers, because it reduces the obstacle of having to create a fake Facebook profile. “Scammers almost universally rely on faking their identity in order to execute their scams. On a photo dating app like Tinder, clearly the photo is one of the key things they need to fake...adding direct from camera roll makes life even easier for scammers, and Tinder will want to balance the undoubted appeal of this feature with users against the increased security risk introduced into their platform.”

Another important feature in the new update concerns messaging. With a nod to Facebook features, Tinder is allowing you to “like” a message by tapping a green heart that appears next to a message you receive. iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users can also use 3D touch to preview links sent within messages. And yes, emojis will now be available in larger format – just to make things more fun.

Tinder has also teamed up with GIPHY to allow users to exchange GIFs with their matches. (And yes, there are millions of your favorite GIFS  - including one of a Kristin Wiig character from Saturday Night Live and numerous cute kittens, in case you were wondering about the options.) To use a GIF, you can select the blue “GIF” button found at the bottom left of the chat interface.

To find out more about this dating app, please read our review of Tinder.

Are you a plus size dater looking for a new and better online dating experience? WooPlus aims to create a friendlier, more enjoyable time for daters who are sick of apps and online dating sites geared towards people with leaner bodies, and are looking for a more accepting environment.

Niche dating sites are a huge part of online dating. While Tinder serves the general dating market, some sites and apps prefer to focus on a certain segment of the market with particular tastes – whether it’s dating people who have the same political beliefs, eating habits, or religious views, for instance. Some dating sites even cater to hobbies, lifestyles and preferences like Star Trek fans, farmers, tattoo lovers, or those who prefer to date redheads.

You'd think we'd all be experts at choosing photos by now. We need them for Facebook, for Twitter, for Instagram, for Snapchat, for LinkedIn... even our Gmail accounts can display an image. So why do we still find it so difficult to select photos that are accurate, flattering and appropriate?

The pressure is even stronger on a dating service. You're desperate to find the photo that says “I'm fun, laidback, ambitious, adventurous, funny, friendly, good with pets and parents, and – duh – attractive as hell.” It's enough to make any head spin.

It's time to end your era of inadequate photos. If you have any of these images on your profile, delete them ASAP.

1. The bathroom mirror selfie. Let's start with the obvious. It's 2016, so selfies are standard – but that's no excuse for taking one with a toilet in the background. Ideally, you don't need a mirror at all. Step up your selfie game and use the front-facing camera. If you just can't resist the allure of a mirror shot, use one somewhere else in the house. No one needs to see how often you scrub your shower.
2. The behind the times photo. Once you had hair like Fabio. Now you're Bruce Willis bald. Who cares? There's no shame in embracing your current self in all its glorious imperfections. What is shameful is pretending you're someone you aren't anymore to get more dates. It will be obvious immediately when you meet in person. Save yourself the embarrassment and your date the irritation by posting current pictures.
3. The heavily filtered 'gram. See above. Do you want to be greeted by a look of disappointment on your date's face when they realize you look nothing like your photos? It's the era of Instagram, so you're bound to run into filtered photos on dating services, but don't edit your face until you look like a completely different person (or, worse, an alien).
4. The group shot. Um... so which one are you? Today's singles are impatient and it only takes a second to swipe left on your profile. Don't make prospective dates play a game of Where's Waldo? with your photos. Even if you include a caption identifying yourself, there's only so much someone can see when you're just one figure amongst many. Your dates want to know what you actually look like.
5. The cropped out ex. Yikes. Did every single picture of you get deleted except that one? Because that's the only excuse for using it. Sure, your ex is out of the picture (literally), but isn't it still kind of weird that that's the photo you chose for your dating profile? A cropped or blurred out ex just looks odd. And for that matter, don't leave the ex in, either.

What's the worst photo you've seen on a dating profile? Share your best snap mishaps in the comments.

Admit it: you're no stranger to taking selfies. In 2015, it's inevitable that you've at least tried it (even if you deleted it immediately afterwards in embarrassment).

But what if your selfie could do something useful? That's the premise behind dating app Blume, which hopes to solve one of the biggest problems in the dating industry: the uncertainty about who’s actually behind the profiles you're into.

Con artists lurk in the darkest corners of online dating. And even if you manage to avoid the seriously scammy profiles, there's a good chance you'll have a run in with someone who just doesn't match their photos. It's practically a rite of passage for online daters.

On Blume, photographic self-portraits save the day. Users connect via profiles, but match via freshly taken selfies. Deceptive profiles are more easily weeded out, and catfish may be more discouraged from joining in the first place. Add it all up, and you have an app that creates a safe and trusted environment in which users can feel certain about each other's true identites.

Blume users begin with a main screen that shows people nearby. If two people 'Like' each other, they connect. When a connection is made, both parties must send a selfie to each other. The photo lasts seven seconds after it's opened before disappearing forever and, in another shoutout to Snapchat, text can be placed over the picture as an icebreaker.

If you're not in selfie mode when a match is made (because let's face it, you're probably searching while you're languishing in bed with a head-pounding hangover), you can reuse a single selfie up to five times.

If you take a screenshot on Blume, you will automatically be banned for 2 hours for a first offense. Further screenshots result in a 7-day ban, a 30-day ban and, after 4 illicit screenshots, a permanent ban from the app. Blume is serious about keeping conversations, selfies and other user content private.

When a mutual match is made, any text laid over the top of the selfies is automatically transferred into a chat session and full profiles are revealed. Once in the chat, you can swipe left to send further selfies.

If uncertainty about who is behind a profile is the top problem for online daters, the second could be difficulty establishing real emotional connections when you meet through a screen. Blume also hopes selfies will help with the latter by making online dating a more intimate experience.

"We really wanted to solve these problems and make online dating a lot more personal, fun and safe at the same time,” co-founder and CEO Daniel Delouya told Bustle.