Match Group Sued Over Access to Dating App Safety Records

A Match Group shareholder has sued the company to find out what its board knew about reports of sexual assault and violence involving users of its dating apps. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware on September 23 by the City of Hallandale Beach Police Officers’ and Firefighters’ Personnel Retirement Trust, which owns Match Group shares.

At the center of the case is Sentinel, Match Group’s internal safety database. The complaint says Match has known since at least 2016 which users were reported for drugging, assaulting or raping people they met through its apps. These reports have been recorded in Sentinel since 2019. By 2022, the system was collecting hundreds of concerning incidents each week, according to the complaint.

The pension fund now wants to know where that information went. “A company that receives hundreds of reports of sexual violence every week either escalates that information to its board of directors, or it does not,” the complaint states. If directors received the information, the fund wants to know how they responded. If they did not, it raises questions about whether Match had adequate systems in place to ensure serious safety issues reached the board.

The lawsuit was prompted in large part by the 2025 Dating Apps Reporting Project, an 18-month investigation published by The Guardian and other media partners. Titled Rape Under Wraps, it examined how Match Group handled reports of sexual violence across its apps, using internal company documents, court records and interviews with employees and survivors.

Following the investigation, the fund first requested internal records from Match in September 2025. Match refused, and further discussions failed to resolve the issue. A new demand was made in August 2026, but Match again declined to provide the records. The fund has now taken the dispute to court, asking a Delaware judge to order Match to hand them over.

Mark Brooks: Unfortunately, in the dating space, sexual assaults and violence are routine, not the exception, and come with the territory, and our protection of members is a key value they expect of us. The bigger the dating property, the more incidents there are, so of course Match Group has a large number of incidents. Our key value to our membership is to do far better than the real world. Anonymity anon. When we have indications of bad actors, we block and report members. The board’s role is to drive greater change and assertiveness, nay aggressiveness, of company trust & safety systems. (At PlentyofFish we had a very low cost for false negatives and deleted people quickly.)