For some reason certain people feel the need to create a dating profile using someone else’s pictures. Whether it’s done to impersonate someone else, bully someone or even just pull a prank, it happens more than you’d think.
Luckily Bumble thinks they have found a pretty innovative way to stop it from happening, at least on their platform. The female-led dating app just announced that they are launching photo verification as a way to rid impersonators from the platform.
Here’s how the verification process will work. Bumble will randomly show you one of 100 different poses – like someone taking a selfie while winking at the camera or holding up two fingers, etc. You then take a picture of yourself mimicking this pose to the company, and they make sure it matches up with the person in your profile pictures.
These pictures will be reviewed by a team of real people working in-house, and even though it sounds like a big workload the startup says they have the capacity to verify people “within minutes”.
While Verification won’t be mandatory for all users, anyone who has had their profile reported as being potentially fake will have to verify within 7 days of being reported. If they don’t verify in this time period their profile will be hidden and they will be temporarily denied access to seeing matches.
And even if you’re not flagged you can still apply to be verified manually just to let potential suitors know you are who you say (or show) you are.
All verified users, both those who opt in to be verified and those that are prompted to will receive a special verified badge on their profile similar to Twitter or Instagram.
While Bumble is using photos there are of course other ways for companies to verify users – some use cell phone numbers to make sure your name matches your profile and others make you upload a picture your driver’s license. But Bumble’s method seems pretty straightforward and accurate – since the pose you need to mimic is chosen from a database of 100 pictures the odds of an impersonator finding a photo where their target is doing that exact same post is essentially zero.
Verification will roll out in about a week, starting with users who have been reported as being potentially fake. Then about two weeks later Bumble will open verification to all users.