Quoted in Wired on dating app safety
the pros and cons of video verification online
"Hinge Will Try to Thwart Scammers With Video Verification"
Oct 25, 2022 10:03 AM
"Match Group, which operates one of the world’s largest portfolios of dating apps, will soon add a new profile verification feature to its popular dating app Hinge. The feature is part of a larger effort to crack down on scammers who use fake photos and purport to be people they’re not on the app, often with the intent of eventually scheming romantic conquests out of money...."
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"The company’s rollout of video verification tools on Hinge are long overdue—and may not be foolproof. Maggie Oates, an independent privacy and security researcher who has also programmed a game about sex work and privacy called OnlyBans, says in an email that she strongly believes biometric authentication should be optional and incentivized in dating apps, but not required. A multi-pronged verification approach might be more effective, Oates says, with the added benefit of giving users options. “Not everyone is comfortable with biometrics. Not everyone has a driver’s license. Online identity verification is a really hard problem.”
And she believes that relying solely on facial recognition technology for profile verification will only last for so long.
“While it seems to be working for now, with looming advances in deepfakes, I’m not sure this method will be effective for long,” Oates says. “Liveness detection will be a little harder to spoof, depending on how complex the algorithms are under the hood.”...
