Do you remember the news “a woman was found dead after Tinder date“?
Online dating apps have been criticized for their lack of security, which has also discouraged many people from trying to use them to make friends or develop relationships. As a result, in order to identify whether their dates are real or fake, more and more people start to believe in online dating identity verification. What is it? Why is it important? Does it have any benefits and risks? Answers to all of the questions will be stated in the article below. If you’d like to know, please read.
Why is Identity Always Required to be Verified during Online Dating?
In order to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic, people turn to online ways to make connections without being exposed outdoors. Therefore, those social media providers are accountable for keeping users secure on their services so that they advocate for their members to verify their online dating identity. In fact, online dating identity verification is really necessary for every cyber citizen to practice, because it can:
Ensure the safety of users offline
If you’re now chatting with an unverified guy with great passion and he invites you to meet him offline, it’s optimal for you not to go, or your safety will probably be threatened. You don’t want to die at such a beautiful age, right? After all, there are still many beautiful things in this world that is worth experiencing. Even if the guy has the “verification badge”, you shouldn’t meet him at a secluded place at night as it is still risky. Try to communicate with him to meet at a place you are dramatically familiar with.
Combat cybercrime
If you don’t verify the online dating identity of your date, you can never get to know the real side of him or her. Is he really here to date you? Or is he up to something else? You won’t know. Maybe he’s chatting with you just to get your personal information, like your real name, phone number, etc. Then he may put all the information on the dark web for sale, or he may directly hack your account and get all the information on your phone, such as your bank card number and then threaten you to succumb to him.
Eliminate romance scams as much as possible
Have you ever heard of a “romance scam”? Romance scams first appeared on various online social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. One day you suddenly found a very handsome, young, and rich man or an influencer-looking beautiful lady chatting with you through private messages. You two chatted for a while and felt that each other had a good feeling, and then you thought you had found a treasure of your life. However, later he asked you for money and gifts for various reasons, sometimes beyond your affordability. You asked him whether he could wait for a while, but he just deleted you directly. This is called a romance scam, a kind of fraud that scammers mask themselves in order to get money from others. And now, with the popularity of online dating, romance scams in dating apps have become more common. Therefore, for the safety of your heart and property, you must verify the identity of the one who is talking to you in those apps before trusting him totally. You’ll never know what he looks like under his intricate pretense.
What Aspects Should be Considered for Online Dating Identity Verification?
Generally speaking, online dating ids are used by dating services to distinguish between those who register using their real identities and photos and those who register using fake names and everything. If you pass the online dating identity verification, others will see a verified badge in your dating profile which means you’re real. If you want to verify your online dating id, you should provide:
Your phone number
Most of the dating apps, according to their privacy policy, would require you to provide a number in order to identify your authenticity. If you want to pass the online dating identity verification, a number (whether it is your private number or not) is needed. For online security and privacy, a personal number isn’t suggested.
Your email address
You should also provide a feasible email address. Honestly, getting an email address is much easier compared to getting a phone number because basically, every email allows you to register an address for free without any proof of your identity. Anyway, since the verification needs, you just provide one and that’s enough.
A photo of yours as your icon
You should also upload the latest photo of your own. Don’t use others’ photos or photos downloaded from the internet trying to deceive the verification system, as the system will check the data on your photo to see whether it comes from your phone camera or is downloaded from somewhere else.
Your current job
The verification system requires you to provide your occupation for two purposes. First, to see whether your job is a proper one. If you are a drug dealer or launder money or do something illegal, you will certainly not pass the verification. Second, to see whether you are an adult, which is because in most countries minors are not allowed to have official work.
Your location
Sometimes the system would need you to provide your current location. Relatively speaking, the address is a little bit difficult to verify. But you’d better provide your permanent address as you’d be liable to others if you do this. After all, it won’t cost you anything at all.
Benefits of Online Dating Identity Verification
More cyber citizens begin to verify their online dating identities, as they’ll be able to enjoy a few benefits by doing this, including:
Ensure your own safety.
You need to verify your own online dating identity first, both for your own sake and for the sake of others. Don’t trust those who are unverified, and actually, you don’t even need to pay attention to them, because if they are using a dating app just to make friends without any other purpose, they should be very conscientious about verifying themselves as well.
Boost the success rate of online dating.
Once you see the verification badge of others in their profiles, you get to know that he is real and not just a fake bot, so you can communicate with him or even start a romance without any worries. Therefore, the success rate of online dating will naturally increase.
Meet more authentic people.
If more and more people verify their online dating identities as you do, you will all be able to use those online dating apps with more confidence and freedom. Whether you’re just making friends or dating through those apps, your choices will become more.
Risks of Online Dating Identity Verification
Online dating identity verification does not just have benefits, however. Sometimes you’ll also encounter its deficiencies, such as:
Others may verify their identities with fake personal information.
So, you verify yourself out of your respect for others, while someone else does so with completely or partially unauthentic personal information. In fact, online dating identity verification does not always correct. Instead, many people will take the legal loophole by using fake personal information to package themselves and then try to scam others with bad temptation. So, you see online dating identity verification is not always reliable, and the authenticity of the one whom you are chatting with needs to be judged by yourself. Be careful! This is of great importance!
Expose yourself thoroughly on the internet.
Although nearly all the internet companies have announced that they’re taking action to protect users’ privacy and information security, massive information leakage still happens sometimes. Do you still remember Facebook’s data leakage a few months ago? About 530 million people had some personal information leaked, including, in some cases, phone numbers. So now it seems that the general public doesn’t trust those companies anymore, regardless of whether those companies intend to sell the collected users’ information or inadvertently leak it. See? This is why sometimes you use your real information to do the online dating identity verification is risky. Don’t always trust the internet, because your personal information may have already been compromised without your knowledge.
Get a Balance between Benefits and Risks of Online Dating Identity Verification
Online dating identity verification is necessary for everyone who has the need to make friends and find date through the internet, as they always pay close attention to the security of themselves when dating online. However, after reading the above section, you have definitely found that online dating identity verification has many benefits, but it does contain some risks. So how can you balance those benefits and risks? Here are some simple tips for you to avoid being scammed on dating apps:
Only use those well-known dating apps.
There are numerous dating apps now on the internet. You’d better choose those apps which are identified by App Store and Google Play, and never download those unidentified ones send by others. It would be even better if you choose those widely known ones like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, as they are tested by the general public and also contain more high-quality members rather than just dummy profiles.
Use an extra number for registration.
Registering with a fake number doesn’t mean that your account is also fake, on the contrary, it is about keeping the account secure and authentic. People use dating apps because they want to start an online date, and there is nothing they fear more than having their accounts discovered by their relatives and friends. By registering with a fake number, you’ll never encounter this kind of embarrassment.
Don’t download anything someone send you in the dating apps.
“Don’t eat that candy given by strangers.” Even a 4-year-old child knows it. Don’t download unknown files sent by online strangers if you don’t want to reap some kind of scam or phone virus. After all, you are no longer a child who doesn’t know anything. If you experience it in the future, hopefully, you can report it to the dating app team to prevent others from information leakage.
Hide your personal information from anyone on the dating apps.
No matter how familiar you are with your online date, don’t show your complete name, address, and any other private information to him/her when it is too soon as you are also not so sure about the identity of him/her. What if the one in front of you is a criminal? What if his/her aim is to steal all of your property? So do hide your personal information from anyone on the dating apps unless you already know him/her inside and out.