You’ll Soon Be Able to Run Background Checks on Tinder Matches

Next up: Match, Hinge, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid. 

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(Last Updated on May 20, 2021 by Datezie Editors)

It’s a scary, scary world out there — and while you may be tempted to just pretend it doesn’t exist, you have no choice but to face the (sometimes) harsh truth. Interacting with strangers on a dating app? Well, that’s just downright terrifying, especially knowing that there are so many scammers, catfishers, and hate to say it, creeps out there. But still, millions of us do it in the hopes that it’ll lead us to our one true love, the person who shelters us from the craziness happening around us. At least that’s the goal, right? 

There’s tremendous risk involved anytime you put yourself out there to complete and utter strangers — with photos, videos and personal details no less. That’s why Match Group, parent company of popular dating apps like Tinder, is partnering with Garbo, a not-for-profit background check platform. Kathryn Kosmides founded Garbo in 2018 following her experience with “gender-based violence,” as a way to make other women, in particular, feel safer when dating online. When someone performs a background check, Garbo pulls in tons of data about any given individual, including arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment claims and other concerning crimes. But Garbo takes into account the racial and gender-based inequities in our country, which is why arrests related to drug possessions and traffic violations are excluded from the collected data. 

“Before Garbo, abusers were able to hide behind expensive, hard-to-find public records and reports of their violence; now that’s much harder,” Kosmides said in the official press release. “Being able to reach historically underserved populations is fundamental to Garbo’s mission and the partnership with Match will help us connect with these communities.”

It’s unclear at this point how exactly Match Group plans to roll out background checks. At this point, they’ve announced that Tinder will be the first of their dating sites to feature this capability later in 2021 with Match.com, Hinge, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid following its lead. 

This comes one year after Tinder added a Noonlight panic button feature that stores information about a date, including the user’s location, and alerts emergency services once pressed. In the months following, Match Group partnered with RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, to review how sexual misconduct is currently being handled across all of their dating sites. on all the company’s dating sites. Together, all of these efforts prove that Match Group is committed to making all of its sites safer for everyone involved. 

Let’s all take a collective sigh of relief — and then get ready for an even better dating experience in the months to come. 

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