Tinder

Dating app Tinder has had to deal with a lot of security issues, despite the app’s verification system using Facebook Connect.  In theory, because of Facebook’s security measures, only “real people” can join Tinder, so users can sign up with some reassurance the profiles they'll encounter will be real. But lately, this has not been the case.

Spammers and scammers have been able to lure users away from Tinder and onto their sites, typically, with spam bots - fake accounts pretending to be real people that flirt with users in order to redirect them to adult sites - and take their money. In the past, Tinder users could block profiles, but they couldn’t report spam.

According to website Tech Crunch, things have changed. Users can now not only block accounts but also report spam. Tinder also made a technical update to address the issue, and the update was effective at cutting down on the in-app spam. Unfortunately, the spam bots just found another avenue - SMS. Phone spam for Tinder users skyrocketed.

Instead of luring Tinder users away while they are inside the app, the spam bots changed their scripts and started collecting mobile numbers from the users, sending those users text messages with links to the spammers’ websites. 

It can be really misleading for users to receive text messages from spammers who are pretending to be people. One example Tech Crunch used that came from a spam bot read like this: “sorry my phone’s almost dead and out of mins too. If you go on Tinderpages.com ill be there. Im sweetgirl4u on it. Sorry its free tho if you confirm your email.”

Tinder is still racking up complaints, so it seems the technical update hasn’t actually made a difference. According to security researchers, this is beacuse Tinder was successful in getting rid of the in-app spam bots but not the spam bots themselves. Lead researcher Raj Bandyopadhyay explained to how they conducted their research, and what it meant for Tinder:

“Our topic modeler looks for phone number related complaints, and then classifies them using Data Scientist to validate correlation. In this case, we isolated complaints related to Tinder, and then compared them to historical complaints. This gives us a high degree of confidence that the spike is specific to Tinder activity and not just an overall spike in spam. In addition, it is important to re-emphasize that this is a pattern we have frequently seen – fraudsters migrating to phone after being thwarted online.”

So it seems text messages are becoming the spam bot avenue of choice, since online technology has improved so much. Now, mobile security needs to catch up.

Tinder is no doubt the latest craze of online and mobile dating. Most singles have heard of it, if they aren’t already using it. But despite the fact that Tinder requires you to sign up via your Facebook profile (which keeps out the fake profiles and supposedly keeps people honest about who they are) – hackers are finding ways to game the system for their own benefit.

A recent article by such a hacker appeared in Android Central, where the author Cage Michaels - who is happily in a relationship - enjoys just being on Tinder, flipping through photos and judging each woman's hotness. He has decided to share his strategy with the masses (“FTW” – “for the win” - as he says). To him, Tinder has nothing to do with his relationship and his “real life,” but considers it a game or a way to pass time entertainingly. He says, “I'm in a relationship. I'm happy. I just find it really entertaining to swipe through photos of real people. Some people spend all day looking at photos of cats. Personally, I'd rather look at photos of women. To each their own.”

Of course, in order to look at photos on Tinder you have to be on Tinder. This created a problem for him, because his friends (and her friends) noticed he was on the app and were wondering if he was cheating or had broken up with his girlfriend. According to him, neither was the case. Hence his dilemma – how could he Tinder without all the hassle?

Instead of setting up a fake Facebook profile (which can take some effort), he decided to outsmart Tinder’s GPS capabilities and fake the app into thinking he was visiting another city (where he had no friends or connections). This made his Tinder habit easy to maintain.

He goes step-by-step in the article, guiding people first through downloading a fake GPS app. Once you download, you can pick the city where you want to anonymously browse Tinder profiles. When you hit the “play” button within the fake GPS, you can then enable a fake GPS signal. Once you open Tinder, it will pick up the fake GPS location from your phone and use that for its search.

While this is one way of creating a fake profile on Tinder, it certainly isn’t the only way to outsmart the app. There are new apps being launched that take advantage of Tinder’s functionality by allowing people to match en masse without even looking at profiles, just to increase your odds of success.

Between these and the hackers, you might want to question whether your Tinder match is real, or just another person who’s gaming the system. 

Tinderly’s tagline is: “Tired of swiping right all day?” Apparently, daters whose thumbs are getting tired of all that repeat motion are demanding an easier way to Tinder. Or at least, that’s what new unofficial Tinder apps like Tinderly are saying.

The new app aims to change the now-“cumbersome” Tinder app with something much more efficient: instead of swiping right one potential date at a time (who has the patience or time to look at each individual photo anyway?) – you can “like” an entire mass of singles near you in mere seconds.

That is, if you are into numbers games when it comes to dating. Men and women have both gravitated to Tinder because of its game-like interface, where they can swipe left if they aren’t interested in someone’s photo and swipe right if they are, and see who matches with them. But more recently, men have figured out a way to game the system, thanks to a few uber-successful Tinder users who have been giving away their secrets.

The more people you like, the more chances you have at getting a date, or getting laid, depending on your goals. So the faster you can “like,” the more competitive (and successful) you can be.

A slew of apps and even Google Chrome extensions have launched recently, all claiming to help in the high-speed Tinder chase, all claiming their technology helps you like users en masse, so you don’t waste all that time trying to get just one match from Tinder.

Tinderly is the latest, offering an interface to view photos of several matches at a time, and allowing you to like 50 matches per swipe.

So will an app like Tinderly take over for Tinder? With competition like Tinderoids, Botinder, and others, it’s hard to say. Other apps are cutting straight to the chase, too - allowing you to say “yes” to hundreds of matches in mere seconds. Marketing is going to be key for who remains competitive, but Tinder-compatible apps aren’t really differentiating themselves at the moment. They all seem to offer the same high-speed technology, which is geared more towards men, not women. Why not think about what female Tinder users want in an app – if only to capture a different market?

Reviews for Tinderly have been mixed, with some users claiming that the only thing you are able to do with Tinderly is swipe left or right for multiple users, but you’re unable to message or look at profiles. Others have been happy with its efficiency.

Tinderly is available only for iOS, not for Android phones.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Tinder even if you haven’t already tried it. The app has taken the dating world by storm, mostly because of its easy access through your phone, simple set-up, and the sheer number of people using it. Tinder makes it seem like dating options are endless.

But accessing Tinder through your phone and looking through each individual match takes way too much time, at least according to some daters. Botinder intends to resolve this problem by offering a desktop version of Tinder, where you can see several potential dates at once.

Developers are launching new unofficial Tinder apps and complementary extensions regularly, just to capture this fast-growing market and capitalize on it with the latest and greatest in dating technology, or at least establishing their own marketing spin. Botinder is an unofficial Google Chrome Extension that allows you to like and dislike Tinder users even faster than you can using the official app. And if there’s one thing Tinder users need, it’s speed. Swiping left and right through each individual candidate is way too time-consuming.

There is a strategy to Tinder which makes technology like Botinder appealing, at least for the guys. By saying “yes” to as many women as possible as quickly as possible, you greatly improve your chances of getting matched (or laid). For the women, it’s a bit different. They tend to be much more discerning, turning down potential matches a lot more often than accepting. With Botinder, they too can dislike matches more quickly, making the process more efficient for everyone.

According to website Business Insider, creating a desktop version of Tinder has been a popular request for a long time. Typically, users had been downloading an Android emulator to run a version of the app, but now this is a much easier way to run it on your laptop, for those who aren’t quite so tech-saavy.

Botinder sorts users by row, allowing you to organize your matches so you can compare or view photos several at a time. There is also a “Booster” function where you can choose “like automatically” and Botinder will start liking every Tinder user near you – multiple people a second – so you can’t really even see who you are liking. But that’s not really the point – it’s actually playing a numbers game with dating. It would take weeks of being a dedicated Tinder app user before you got the kind of instant matching success that is likely with Botinder.

The real question is: will Botinder improve the overall dating experience, or just add to the noise and confusion?

For more information on service this Chrome Extension works with you can read our Tinder page.

I could say something about how hard IAC/InterActiveCorp is trouncing the competition, but…um… It hardly has any competition. The media conglomerate, helmed by Barry Diller, has been killing it in the online dating realm for years and shows no signs of stopping.

Thanks to its two massive dating sites, Match.com and OkCupid, IAC was already the biggest player in the game when it decided to shake things up last December by creating a special division for its online dating holdings called the Match Group.

This year, IAC has made more powerful strides in its quest to dominate online dating. It increased its majority stake in Tinder, the mobile app at the top of the mobile dating heap, and acquired most of the Brooklyn-based dating site HowAboutWe.

Slowly but surely, IAC has bought its way into the dating market. By the end of 2013, IAC reportedly hosted 30 million active users throughout its dating properties, 3.4 million of whom are paying subscribers. The Match Group is now responsible for approximately one quarter of IAC's total revenue. And they're not shy about singing their own praises.

“We are not just the acquirer of choice,” said Sam Yagan, chief executive of the Match Group, “we are the only acquirer.”

Investors, on the other hand, are a little more wary. Analysts are convinced that online dating's growth is likely to slow, despite the fact that the market has never been stronger in the US or abroad. The primary bump in the road is free mobile dating services, which are making it increasingly difficult for other dating services to generate a profit.

Mobile dating now accounts for around 27% of dating site services. As mobile audiences grow, dating sites are finding it challenging to turn those users into paying members. They are also challenged by a crowded market, which becomes more congested all the time as various niche sites pop up. Although many don't last for long, they're still successful in drawing audiences away from larger, more general dating sites.

With that in mind, IAC’s future may lie in Tinder. So far the app has put growth above revenue, but it is estimated that Tinder could eventually earn $75 million a year. First, the company has to figure out how to monetize it without losing users or slowing growth. Yagan is feeling positive about the future.

“It is not a winner take all dynamic,” he said. “There is a lot of concurrent usage. Unlike a car, the majority of online daters use multiple products, so you want to have a portfolio — a multibranded approach.”

Tinder has become incredibly popular in the last couple of years, thanks to its game-like format of swiping left and right, and to its easy set-up. There’s no time-consuming process of writing a profile and anguishing over what to say in your messages. You cut to the chase: yes or no.

But now, people are looking for easier ways to date than even Tinder can provide. For those daters, there’s a new app for that called Tinderoid, short for Tinder on Steroids.

This app is mainly catering to the male Tinder users and online daters, especially ones who feel they aren’t getting enough matches. With online dating, guys send out mass emails when they aren't getting responses, hoping someone will email back. It increases the odds, at least. With Tinder, guys are adopting the strategy of saying “yes” to every match, and are just swiping right without even looking at photos. They figure if they swipe right to as many candidates as possible, their chances of getting dates (or getting laid) increases significantly.

But all that swiping right can apparently be tiring.

Tinderoid adds features to Tinder that its creators think are missing, one of them being the ability for a user to like everyone in their area. Tinderoid founder Mike (he provides no last name) tells website TechVibes that a user can like as many as 10,000 potential matches in a few seconds.

Then you can skip all that swiping and order a beer, waiting for matches to roll in.

This isn’t the only new feature Tinderoid added. The app also allows users to search for potential matches using keywords, and view multiple results at the same time. So instead of looking at people one by one, you can select a bunch at a time, and again – see who bites.

And while Tinder doesn’t have an iPad app, Tinderoid offers support for the tablet’s larger screen.

According to Mike, the app is currently available for iOS and has been downloaded over 100,000 times. It has over 5,000 five-star reviews on the iTunes store, I’m guessing from its male user base.

Will this be helpful to daters in the long run? Maybe for some guys, but not for most daters. Women tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of matches and messages they can get when they are online dating, get frustrated, and stop using the service, and it’s no different with Tinder. Women are still more likely to swipe left, mostly because of tactics like this, where guys tend to always say yes, even if they might not be all that attracted or interested in a particular woman. They are just seeing who they can get.

Tinderoid is only available on iTunes, but the company is working on an Android version. It is free to download, but if you want all ads removed it costs $2.99.