A report published by the US Congress's joint economic committee on Tuesday detailed an investigation into romance scams on dating platforms owned by Match Group, which operates apps such as Tinder and Plenty of Fish.
The report indicated that as of the second half of 2025, Tinder had not updated most of its machine learning models in years, which reportedly made it less reliable at detecting scammers and keeping pace with new threats. Data from Match Group showed that through the third quarter of 2025 in the US, nearly 1.5 million scammers or other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge had matched with at least one user, with almost 500,000 of those accounts exchanging contact information.
Mary, a user of Plenty of Fish, told the Guardian she lost almost $100,000 to a romance scammer she met on the app in 2024. She described constant contact and pressure for money, which she sent in cryptocurrency payments.
Following the investigation's launch, Match Group has introduced new measures to combat scams. These include a facial verification feature for new Tinder users in the US, requiring a video selfie verification. The company also instituted a new AI model in the first half of 2025 to examine profiles and other information to detect scammers. Senators Maggie Hassan and Marsha Blackburn noted that while these changes are encouraging, they came after a prolonged period during which scams continued to proliferate.
Yoel Roth, Match Group’s senior vice-president of trust and safety, stated that the report mischaracterises the historical scale of their investment and completed work, asserting that trust and safety is a foundational priority.