Tinder say they have cut spam traffic by 90% after partnering with mobile identity company TeleSign.
TeleSign uses a combination of real-time risk analysis of phone numbers attached to user accounts, and SMS-based verification techniques.
Tinder employed TeleSign rather than building an extra in-house system, in order to tackle its well-publicised spam problem.
When a normal user signs up to Tinder, they use a Facebook login to authenticate their account.
Now however, using TeleSign’s software, if a new account seems suspicious, the user must go though an extra level of mobile identity security.
Using TeleSign’s PhoneID and SMS Verification, Tinder then get a rating of how “potentially risky” a phone number is, and whether the number really belongs to the person creating the account.
If this score is high, the user is blocked.
And Ryan Ogle, Tinder’s CTO, said the effects have been incredibly positive, cutting spam traffic by 90%:
“Security has always been of the utmost importance to us. After our user base boomed, we decided that we wanted to increase our ability to ensure integrity and authenticity to make our system and users even more secure.
“Once we had TeleSign in place, we were able to block fraudulent accounts in a much more sophisticated way. It’s been 100 percent accurate and we’ve seen about a 90 percent reduction in spam traffic as a result, from day one.”
TeleSign analyses massive volumes of real-time and historical data on phone numbers, including associated contact information, phone types, geographies and carriers.
Scoring includes risk levels and recommendations for how to handle accounts.
With the software, Tinder is also able to set a limit for the number of accounts created using the same phone number.
“A month after implementing TeleSign we saw a significant drop in the amount of phone numbers the algorithm recommended to block. Using TeleSign strengthens our brand, protects our users and saves on support costs. It’s had a significant impact on our business on many levels, ” said Ogle.
“Further validating the TeleSign solution, of the 196 countries in which Tinder verifies and authenticates users, we’ve seen close to 20 percent greater delivery rate than with our previous vendor.”
To read a case study on TeleSign’s work with Tinder, click here.
Tinder has had a catalogue of bad press regarding fraudulent activity on the service, such as the Castle Clash bots, a report that spammers had circumvented security updates and recent tinkering with their API to match male users together.
Earlier this month, Tinder said the recent introduction of limited swiping with Tinder Plus had cut spammers by 50%.
To read about the current problems Tinder, and the online dating industry, faces with regards to spam and fraud, read out report below:
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