Badoo Introduces Selfie Request To Improve User Safety

Badoo is set to introduce a new selfie feature to help reduce fake profiles and catfishing.

With “Selfie Request”, Badoo wants to improve user safety, giving female members the chance to ask their matches for a selfie.

This seeks to put women at ease when sparking up new conversations and messaging users – giving them peace of mind knowing the person they are chatting to is the same person from their profile.

Women can only send a selfie request after they have received a message from their match, who can obviously choose whether or not they want to send one.

If they refuse, the pair are not automatically unmatched – Badoo lets users decide whether they want to end the conversation or not.

Asked why the feature was only available for female users, Badoo told GDI: “At the moment, only female users can request a selfie. At Badoo, we pride ourselves on a female-focused mantra – we want to make sure that women feel empowered to initiate and engage in a conversation online without worrying about safety or security.

“In order to scale the technology gracefully it will only be available to female users right now but we are planning to make it available to all users at a later date.”

This latest feature comes shortly after the introduction of a photo verification tool and profile videos, which were both added to the platform earlier this year.

These additions also aim to increase user validity, the former giving singles the opportunity to upload videos of themselves to their profiles.

Likewise, Badoo’s selfie verification system lets users send a selfie of themselves in a certain pose to the app, after which one of Badoo’s 5,000 photo checkers confirms whether the picture is genuine and matches the “pose” brief.

Since introducing the feature in April, Badoo said over 100,000 users verify their profiles every day.

Speaking about why the London-based company built these features, Hadfield said: “At Badoo we are always trying to improve the safety of our users and reduce the risks of catfishing. We make it a priority to create features that help tackle the fears sometimes associated with online dating.

“Ultimately, we want to ensure that Badoo users feel comfortable and safe, especially women. One way of doing this is by giving women the power to request a selfie to ensure the person they’re speaking to is in fact who they say they are.”

Read more about the selfie verification system here.