Canada

You match with someone. The conversation feels natural. They seem genuine. Then they ask for money, send a suspicious link, or convince you to move the conversation somewhere private.

Unfortunately, scenarios like this are becoming more common, and new Canadian data suggests online communities and dating platforms are increasingly attracting fraud activity.

According to reporting from Global News, citing new data from TransUnion, Canadians are facing elevated levels of digital fraud, with online communities, including dating platforms and forums, showing some of the fastest growth in suspected fraud attempts.

For anyone using online dating, this isn’t meant to create fear—it’s a reminder that knowing what to watch for has become just as important as creating a great profile.

Bumble announced it has added ID Verification in addition to other new safety-related features to attract singles back to its app.

The new verification feature lets users submit a photo of a government-issued ID to prove they are who they say they are, and then they can earn a verified badge for their profile, according to Tech Crunch.

The female-centered app is appealing its core demographic with the announcement – focusing on its female clientele who are looking for more safety features on dating apps. ID Verification is available in 11 countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, France and India. The company intends to roll out in more countries in the coming months, according to The Seattle Times.

Bumble is giving 50 couples who met on its app a free wedding in Las Vegas.

According to People Magazine, the company announced its plan to celebrate couples who met via its platform with a free wedding, travel included. For one weekend, Bumble has rented out the famous Little White Chapel in Las Vegas and is turning it into a branded wedding venue for 50 lucky couples.

The chapel itself will be decorated in Bumble yellow, which the company is calling Little Yellow Chapel for the wedding weekend. The famous venue has hosted many celebrity weddings, including Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck in 2022, as well as Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner in 2019, according to People.

Hinge dating app has another campaign around its tagline “designed to be deleted,” where mascot Hingie journeys to the afterlife after matching a happy new couple.

According to Adweek, marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy Portland created the ad campaign for Hinge, including a video which expands on the designed to be deleted theme.

The video is meant to appeal to younger daters with its slightly dark yet funny approach. It begins with a couple kissing in their car who decide to make their relationship official by deleting the app, sending Hingie into the afterlife. The ad continues with Hingie’s journey, where the mascot is dropped in front of a judge called The Oracle, who grants Hingie’s passage to heaven through a golden doorway.

Men using filters to enhance their dating app photos tend to attract more matches, but they also come across as less trustworthy to women.

According to a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior, women were shown 10 profile photos of single men, both filtered and unfiltered versions. Most women preferred the more attractive, filtered versions of the men, but these same women also said they didn’t seem as trustworthy as the men in the untouched ones.

Researchers also found that ultimately while the women found altered profiles less trustworthy, they were in fact more interested in dating the men behind them. According to PsyPost.org, this conclusion “ultimately suggests that the allure of heightened physical attractiveness outweighs the reservations arising from diminished trustworthiness.”

A massive leak of 2.3 million dating app records, including personal information from over 260,000 dating app users and 969,571 images and private chats were exposed to the public, according to SC Media.

The data breach included extremely sensitive information, including sexually explicit private photos, recollections of sexual experiences, and details about previous sexual encounters that were tied to dating app user profiles, according to Hack Read, a security news website.

The leak primarily affected users of 419 Dating – Chat & Flirt app, which is based in Hong Kong but has users around the world. Other apps were also compromised, including Meet You – Local Dating App and Speed Dating App for American by MyCircle Network Corp, but these are thought to be linked to the same group of developers as 419 Dating.