Tinder Solves Facebook Profile Picture Complaint, Adds GIFs & Message Likes In Big New Update
Tinder has just made two big changes to the app, giving singles the ability to send GIFs to matches, and no longer requiring users to upload profile photos via Facebook.
Users can now upload profile images directly from their smartphone’s camera roll, a move that makes the process of adding photos much easier.
This was always a common complaint from Tinder users, as they were only able to use photos of themselves from Facebook, prompting people to upload Tinder-ready photos to the social network, and even spawning online guides of how to upload private “Tinder” albums to Facebook.
Now, when users select edit and tap the ‘+’ button to add a new photo, they will be given the option to select an image from Facebook, or from their camera roll.
In a blog post announcing the update, Tinder called this its “most-requested” feature, and to celebrate its arrival, is also making cards, profile photos and emojis bigger on the app.
While this is obviously a great change for users – giving them more choice about which photos to upload – it does come with some security concerns around scammers and fake profiles.
Most dating apps like Tinder use Facebook to log its users in, which gives an air of security because it requires all the platform’s dating profiles to be linked to a Facebook account.
Obviously fake Facebook profiles can easily be created by those wishing to do ill on dating apps, but with everyone now able to upload any picture to Tinder from their phone, it increases the possibility of more fake or misleading images being uploaded.
Speaking about this issue, the co-founder of Scamalytics, Dan Winchester, said: “Scammers almost universally rely on faking their identity in order to execute their scams. On a photo dating app like Tinder, clearly the photo is one of the key things they need to fake. Scammers have already been able to add fake photos to Tinder by various means such as first adding those fake photos to Facebook.
“However adding direct from camera roll makes life even easier for scammers, and Tinder will want to balance the undoubted appeal of this feature with users against the increased security risk introduced into their platform.”
With its latest update, the app has also added a number of new features to its messaging service, and has teamed up with GIPHY to allow users to exchange GIFs with their matches.
To do so, users can select the blue “GIF” button found at the bottom left of their chat interface, and browse through millions of GIFs.
As well as this, users can now “Like” individual messages sent to them, by tapping the green heart that appears next to a message they have received.
In addition to this, users on the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus can now use 3D touch to preview links sent within messages.
To install these new features, users simply have to update to the latest version of the app.
For more information about the update, go here.
