Hinge is adding Face Check and privacy safeguards in India as parent Match Group pursues growth there, amid an official warning about dating-app investment fraud and U.S. scrutiny of Tinder’s scam detection.
Hinge said Sept. 28 that it was introducing a phased waitlist for some new users in India, a block list at sign-up and restrictions on screenshots of profiles. It said Face Check helps confirm that a real person is behind an account. Users can still take screenshots of conversations to report concerns.
Match Group’s August investor materials included India in Hinge’s international expansion plans. In the quarter ended June 30, Hinge’s global direct revenue rose 22% to $204 million, while Match Group’s total revenue fell 1% to $853 million. Neither figure shows how much India contributed.
Match Group senior vice president and head of trust and safety Yoel Roth told Mint that scams and fake accounts were a leading user complaint overall and that the concern extended to India. He cited reports there involving investment fraud, restaurant scams and extortion. Mint did not publish an India-specific complaint total.
In an Oct. 31, 2025, advisory, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) warned that fraudsters build trust through fake dating and matrimonial profiles before pitching purported investments, including cryptocurrency. The advisory gave no loss figure tied to Match Group’s apps.
An Oct. 13 report by minority staff of the U.S. Joint Economic Committee (JEC) said most Tinder machine-learning models used to identify scammers and other harmful accounts had gone years without updates by the second half of 2025. In Match Group data reviewed by the staff, a scammer’s Tinder profile at the median drew more than 500 views before a ban in December 2025, compared with fewer than 70 in May 2024. Those views do not measure how many people were defrauded.
Match Group told the committee that other parts of its safety system had been updated. It also said U.S. Tinder interactions with harmful accounts fell more than 70% within a month of Face Check’s nationwide deployment in December 2025. That measure includes spam accounts and bots alongside scammers, so it does not isolate the feature’s effect on scams.
Match Group is scheduled to report third-quarter results Nov. 2 after U.S. markets close.
