Catfishing is one thing, but new figures suggest British crimes linked to dating apps may have risen as high as 700% since 2013. The stats – revealed yesterday, after a freedom of information act request – include offences from attempted murder to rape to burglary. Blackmail was also reported.
Tinder has been singled out as a particularly dangerous app, with 277 reported crimes linked to the app in the first 9 months of last year, compared with a total of 21 related instances in 2013. Grindr was close behind, with stats from 2015 reaching 135 – a dramatic increase on 2013's number of related crimes, which was 34.
A spokesperson for Tinder told Metro: "People with bad intentions exist in coffee shops, bookstores, on social media and social apps," which might be true... but we are arguably increasingly inclined to share information about ourselves with people we meet on apps, especially under the false pretence that they are a "friend of a friend" via Facebook, as on Tinder.
The rise in crimes linked to dating apps is based on statistics independent of the app's number of users – so the increase could be down to a general increase in the number of users on the apps.
That said, the news today follows recent reports of Tinder identity theft, drug dealing and sex work taking place via Grindr and mobile dating apps being blamed for a surge in the number of HIV diagnoses in Asia.
In light of the statistics, remember the golden rules of meeting someone off a dating app: Meetings should always take place in public places and always tell someone where you are.
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