Tinder is carrying out its particular de-escalation. After the covid-19 pandemic and the confinements carried out in many countries, the dating application has launched a new function so that users can make video calls before meeting in person or to avoid running out of appointments in the face of a possible confinement in the coming months. Although the specific date is not known, the app will have this optimization in Spain this summer. Half of Tinder users in the US have already had at least one video call date during the month of June.
The dating app has limited ways to connect to a video call. It can only start to be used when both users have given the go-ahead. The button to start the video conversation is available to both, but is only activated when both participants have pressed it. In addition, none of them know if their interlocutor has previously pressed it or not. Video chat can also be turned off at any time, and if users decide to use it, they must agree to special permissions. At the end, you can give an assessment or continue chatting in writing.
Security measures
Lots of netizens have found fake or stolen photos while trolling Tinder and didn’t realize it until they met their date in person. To avoid this type of deception, Tinder has implemented photo verification through an Artificial Intelligence algorithm for video calls. If the user clicks on ‘Verify your profile’, the application asks them to imitate a pose. In this way, they try to ensure that someone else is not impersonated. “Verified users will have a blue indicator on their profile so they are easily distinguishable,” Tinder said in a statement.
However, through the so-called deep fakes the identity of consumers could be supplanted. “It is a freely available tool that gets the face of any person. It is usually done with a politician or famous person but can be used with anyone. Winks and faces can be made in real time. For example, in April a Zoom video call went viral in which one of the participants posed as Elon Musk,” explains Eusebio Nieva, Check Point’s technical director for Spain and Portugal.
Originally Tinder was designed to meet people located near the user, although now you can change the settings and interact with people from other parts of the world no matter how far away they are. What is commonly known as make a match It happens when two people like each other after reading a short description and seeing a few photos of each user. If this happens, they can start a written conversation or, from now on, by video.
Extortion and identity theft
At first glance, video chatting with strangers doesn’t seem too safe. Despite the fact that Tinder has implemented many measures, cybersecurity experts warn about the risks of this practice. “This function has the same problems as any app allowing access to a device with a webcam, with the connotation that the app it is not useful for teaching or chatting with friends, rather the interaction is with strangers”, explains José Luis Vázquez Poletti, professor in the Department of Computer Architecture and Automation at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
Other dating apps have already incorporated this advancement. Bumble launched a voice and video chat feature in June 2019, and Hinge rolled out video calling globally last month. “This type of apps they can suffer direct attacks such as the collection of videos to extort users with their images or the hacking of the application to obtain user data, as happened with the app Ashley Madison dating,” says Vázquez Poletti. And also indirect attacks. “It is what is known as eWhoring. Many hours of sexual content is collected from people and sold as packages on the deep web to hook unwary people to other types of social networks asking for money or simply impersonating someone else’s identity”, adds Vázquez Poletti.
Every app is hackable. “Although Tinder ensures that the video cannot be saved, no one can guarantee it 100%. It is what Instagram promised with the stories or Snapchat, but now there are many tools to be able to record the screen or get hold of certain content. In addition, there is an additional problem, minors can enter the application only by confirming that they are over 18, even if it is not so,” says Vázquez Poletti. Potential vulnerabilities specific to this feature remain to be seen. “As the app has not yet released this optimization, it is not clear if the encryption is end-to-end or if someone will be able to get in the middle of the conversation, distort it or extract information”, adds Nieva.