#bbc tech

BBC Feature - What are online dating sites doing to keep us safe?

We’re super stoked to have been featured in this article by BBC tech and recognised on our mission to make online dating a safer place with our ID verification tech.

“It's a Friday night and I'm about to meet a hot date I hooked up with on a dating app.

But how do I know he's really who he says he is?

After all, online dating fraud is on the rise and it seems easy for people to adopt false identities, stealing photos from other websites and concocting plausible back stories.

Luckily, my date seemed legit, but if I'd been concerned I could have used a service like Circle 6.

You can let six of your closest friends know where you are at all times, and with just one tap you can contact them should you feel in danger while out on a date.

Online dating is a big and growing business - dating apps are worth $2.5bn (£2bn) in the US alone, according to Marketdata Enterprises.

New stats from campaign Get Safe Online reveal that seven reports of dating fraud are received by the UK's Action Fraud every day - an increase of 32% over two years.

So what are these companies doing to keep their members safe?

A few of the smaller apps are using technology such as Jumio, a digital identification service, to filter out scammers. Dating app TrueView, for example, uses it and has adopted a trust score verification system.

"We didn't want to create just another dating app, there are tonnes of those," says co-founder Matt Verity.

"We wanted to create one where people felt confident about who they're talking to. The more social media accounts you link to it, the more your trust score goes up," says Mr Verity.

But social media accounts can be bogus, too, and set up in a matter of minutes, so as well as using Jumio to delve into these accounts, they adopt another layer of identification.

"An added level of this trust score is getting users to scan in driving licences and passports - allowing you to verify who you say you are," says Mr Verity.

"The more your trust score goes up, the more trustworthy you'll look on the site."

Users can then choose to filter out anyone who doesn't have the same level of trust verification as themselves. But, he insists, anyone with a very low level trust score for a long period would be looked into further.

Yoti may be useful to check out the credentials of someone you're interested in dating.

The app gives anyone the ability to check the name, photo and age of people they meet online.

Once you've made contact with someone you can simply send them a text via the app, asking them to verify themselves using a selfie, mobile number and ID, such as a passport.”