The Tutela Digitalis Dating App Safety Index

A structured record of what each of the nine largest dating apps publishes about identity verification, anti-scam tooling, background checks and reporting, and what those measures do not cover. Headline finding: not one of the nine publishes a background-check programme. The nine split into two groups that should not be conflated. Five (Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish) state outright that they run no background check; all five are Match Group titles, and each attributes this to the end of the Garbo background-check partnership, which launched on Tinder in March 2022 and ended in August 2023. Match Group said at the time it was in talks with alternate providers; no replacement has been announced since (checked July 2026). The remaining four (Bumble, eharmony, Grindr, Duet) publish nothing on the subject. That is an absence of published evidence, not a verified absence of practice, and the dataset records the distinction explicitly in the background_check_class field. Two further findings: identity verification confirms a live face, not honest intent; and in-app safety tooling stops at the platform boundary, which is precisely where romance-fraud approaches move the conversation. Each claim is cited to a source that supports that claim: the platform's own safety documentation for verification and reporting, and separate citations for the background-check history. Counts are derived from the records rather than entered by hand. Live version: https://www.tuteladigitalis.com/dating-app-safety-index