Tinder literally refers to a flammable material; a dry substance ready to burn. That name couldn't be more appropriate for a dating app with a problem that could leave users steaming.
Tinder, the addictive online matchmaking tool, is plagued by fake accounts luring unsuspecting users into pricey phishing schemes. And they ruse is easy to fall for, because it plays into our desire for easy flirtation.
SEE ALSO: 10 Red Flags You're About to Get Spammed
Here's how it works: Scammers set up fake profiles with photos of attractive women. Once a user contacts them, a spambot sends enticing programmed messages, tempting to you to join a private session with a live feed of the person undressing. If you fall for the ploy, you are sent a shortened URL that leads to a site asking for your credit card information to verify your age and begin the cam session.
The landing page invite features a picture of a smiling brunette; if you click to accept the invite you're redirected to a sign-up page requesting your personal information. And here's where the scam really happens: At the top of the page it says your credit card is needed — just to make sure you're over 18. Everything is free, it says.
But it's not: On the bottom of the page, in tiny print, details say you're really being charged as much as $80 a month by a company called csapprove.com. Attempts at finding out more from the contact number on the csapprove site led to a terse exchange with a Florida-based customer service agent and manager who said they couldn't talk unless I had an account and was charged.
Back in late May, Satnam Narang, a single, 31-year-old security response manager at Symantec (a cybersecurity firm that owns Norton anti-virus) was flipping through Tinder in his Santa Monica apartment. After months of no success, suddenly, he had a stream of matches. But they all had sketchy bios and no shared interests.
"This looked very suspicious," he told Mashable. "I sent them messages and out of the three accounts I encountered in that string of that session, I got a reply from two of them. And they were both the exact same reply."
Narang figured it was a hoax. But since he worked in web security, he was curious to follow the trail. He played along, researched the link and discovered it had over 8,000 clicks since it was created in January.
Link baiting and phishing are common practice online. "It's part and parcel of what to expect when a social network gets popular," he says.
My first tinder match was a scam. I guess finding a good woman on the Internet is too good to be true. pic.twitter.com/lwY4aDLjvl
— Pal Henderson (@PRHender) July 9, 2013
This type of thing happens often in chat services like Twitter and AIM: The trend isn't a total disaster for Tinder, but it's been late in addressing the issue. And the app doesn't have a streamlined process to fix spam. There's no way to report it in the app; instead Tinder only allows users to block spam accounts. Meaning, if you have concerns, you have to send Tinder an email or tweet.
In March, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad told the L.A. Times Tinder didn't have problems with fake or spam accounts because users must have Facebook accounts. "Not only do you know there is a high likelihood that this is a real person because it's connected to their Facebook profile, Tinder also tells you who your common friends are, which helps solve that legitimacy issue."
But an experiment a few months ago by Brigham Young students, who created a dummy account with only a handful of Facebook friends, dispelled Rad's claim. Our requests for comment were not returned by Tinder.
On Twitter, it's not hard to find users complaining about the practice:
Some girl on Tinder trying to get me to sign up to a webcam site.. #tinder #webcam #banter http://t.co/c2r6dEnAvT
— Ratzi (@DJRatzi) July 10, 2013
And months of hearing about this practice have people wising up:
@Tinder your app's been over run, by webcam spammers
— Jeremiah Boehner (@sfboehner) July 8, 2013
Still, Narang says there's another problem. With an Android version of the app on the way, he says it's possible the app will be more bogged down by spammers than the iOS version. He says he's found a correlation between newly released apps and spam, with a larger percentage for Android.
Narang has practical advice: "Remain cautious and remain skeptical. If you look at some of the profiles and there's some sketchy aspects: they don't have any shared interests, the pictures are kind of risque, the tag lines are very strange, when you engage with a person and they ask you to click on links and go to a webcam, that's a scam."
If you're having problems with the app, let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, deyangeorgiev; Screenshot courtesy of Symantec
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