Garbo Extends Match Group Offering

Users of one of the Match Group’s platforms can now use Garbo’s online background check service to screen potential dates.

“With just the limited information that you have about someone… like their first name, maybe their phone number, age or zodiac sign, you put this limited information into the system,” Garbo Founder and CEO Kathryn Kosmides said. “In less than two minutes we’ll show someone if they have any violence or harmful arrest convictions or sex offender records.”

Each search through Garbo costs approximately $3.25 but the app is providing complimentary background checks to Match Group’s free and premium subscribers.

After being tested on Tinder, this offer has now expanded to Match.com and Stir.

Kosmides and her team set out to create a ‘new kind of online background check’ that limits the exposure of search subjects while still promoting online safety.

“We’re trying to balance privacy and protection – the great debate of the digital age,” Kosmides adds.

She outlines that other background check platforms seem to reveal too much about a person. 

“I think that background checks have existed in some sort, especially since the rise of the internet,’ She said. “I don’t think they were a good solution for dating apps. … especially if that person is in a vulnerable position. So we don’t provide access to any of that.”