US Senate Releases Romance Scam Investigation Report, Finds Gaps in Tinder’s Fraud Detection
US Senator Maggie Hassan released a report on October 13 following a year-long investigation into romance scams on Match Group’s dating platforms. The report found weaknesses in Tinder’s fraud detection systems and highlighted improvements the company has made to protect users.
Hassan launched the investigation in September 2025 amid growing concerns about romance scams. Match Group cooperated with investigators and provided more than 670 pages of internal documents. The investigation included interviews with fraud prevention experts and scam victims. Americans reported nearly $1.5 billion in romance scam losses in 2025, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The report found that Tinder had not updated most of its machine-learning models used to detect scammers for several years. These systems identify suspicious accounts and need regular updates as fraud tactics evolve. Between May 2024 and December 2025, the number of profile views received by a typical scammer increased by more than 700%. In the first nine months of 2025, nearly 1.5 million scammers and other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge matched with at least one user in the US. Nearly 500,000 exchanged contact information.
Match Group introduced several fraud prevention measures during the investigation:
- Face Check: Mandatory video selfie verification for new US Tinder users since December 2025. Match Group reported a 70% reduction in interactions with scammers, bots and other bad actors, sustained for at least seven months.
- Machine learning: New detection models introduced in 2026 to identify suspicious accounts.
- Detection rules: Tinder added 169 new automated rules and improved another 108 in the first half of 2026.
Hassan welcomed the progress but said more work was needed to protect users.
