These extortionists are all over every dating site, not just Ashley Madison, to the point where someone asking about Instagram early on in the conversation is a red flag more often than not.
How you would kickstart this high-security two sided marketplace is anybody's guess though, not sure there would be enough interest.
I have had to give up on Tinder which at least in my city has become entirely overrun by fake extortion or pig butchering profiles. Bumble is half-way there. Hinge is somehow resisting for now, but I've successfully reported really high quality fake accounts even on there.
I miss the early days of app-based dating apps when so much of your time wasn't wasted on bots.
But membership fees range from $200-500/month.
As far as I know, none of my friends and acquaintances are on there super-apps. The closest I've heard of were matchmaking services that are free for women, but the men pay somewhere between 10 and 30 grand to get access, and it's a woman running the show, keeping track of everybody in the system.
It's a sizeable chunk of revenues without much in the way of commercial gain - since the more you swipe (on humans, bots, or honeypots), the more ads they can show you, the more money they make.
The company made money by having men pay per message, or pay for 100 or 200 messages or something like that. Her job was to keep them talking, build relationships with them, and prevent them from finding out that the site was almost entirely made up of contractors like her. She said there was one man who she had been talking to for over a year, making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of him.
Ultimately, the company was never fined or the CEO charged with anything as their Terms of Service stated that they may utilize company-made profiles that the user may interact with to maintain an enjoyable experience (although said in much more opaque legalese).
They could make verification a paid service. Once verified yourself you can filter out unverified people. Unverified people can't see verification status of others.
Or they could make verification free for women, but the men have to pay to see or filter by verification status.
Or make verification a menu of choices. Imagine if they had a “verify bank account > X”. I’m sure there’s some gold diggers / sugar daddies (and mommas) that would find that helpful.
a kyc check costs 10-15 euros in EU - admittedly, a kyc is more than identity, but still, your price range seems unrealistic - do you have some data to back it up?
Hookup oriented services like Tinder and AM rely on low barriers so people don't put much thought into things.
https://bumble.com/en/help/how-can-i-verify-my-profile
https://hingeapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1030322143553...
https://www.help.tinder.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034941812-P...
Although it is not mandatory.
> With gen AI images getting really good, it feels like we're only a few months to years away from being incapable of telling these profiles apart. For now, you can still spot them.
There's still the old school method of getting around this -- they just use someone else's photos.
There's a lot of really good-looking people that have learned to use their looks to the disadvantage of others (not just women -men, too).
I suspect Grindr is a target, as well, but folks are probably less likely to make complaints. Also, a lot of these extortionists are from nations that are not very tolerant of homosexuality, so they are more likely to go after hetero sites.
Scammers are basically invalidating human intuition about any social aspect online.
There's a sort of balance. By giving less information to a dating site, you might be safer, and limit how much information can get out in a breach.
And then there's the whole advertising/data collection/sharing behavior of most internet sites. "We never sell your information" (except they share it, or "use it for services" or whatever gets them off the hook)
I've also noticed that some folks on dating sites have been burned and are extremely hesitant to participate if a phone number or other personally identifiable information is required.
To confirm these humans aren't extortionists would require photo ID verification like a license submission.
I don't think it's possible to fake being a deep, introspective, and intelligent person that is also adventurous/outdoorsy and people with those traits generally have no interest in being extortionists.
Basically my tip for online dating: screen online only for personality and character traits, and only later in person on a date for looks/chemistry/physical attractiveness. The former isn't something you can fake online, but the latter is.
Unrelated to my response here, but I feel the need to mention it given the context of this article: you have to be a real terrible person to be on a "cheating" dating site, and deserve whatever you get. In this day and age non-monogamy is pretty normal, just be honest with your partners if that is what you are into. It's not for me, but some people love it.
[0] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
When I was in my 20s, I found all of the "pay" dating services to be rip-offs.
Everyone who was on (pay dating site that I can't remember) was also on OkCupid, so it didn't make any sense to pay for a smaller net.
Table For Six (advertised on the radio) turned out to be a scam when I went to the interview. I should have known to walk out, instead of haggling, as soon as "twenty nine, ninety nine" was $2999.00. (I later met a fool who signed up for the service, turned out they had so few suckers that only a few people showed up at the events.)