Tinder, as those of you who are single will know, is an extremely popular mobile dating app that uses your Facebook profile, likes, friend information and photos to match you with similarly minded single people that live near you. It is extremely easy to use. Tinder provides you with a series of photos of potential matches and you merely need to swipe left to get rid of the photo or swipe right to create a match if that person also swiped right when presented with your photo. Tinder then alerts both people and enables them to chat through Tinder. Unfortunately, like just about all popular things, Tinder is also the subject of a number of scams. One common scam occurs when the response you get is not from a real person, but from a bot, which is a computer program that communicates as if it were a real person. The bot may lure you into clicking on links that may download dangerous malware on to your phone or to buy some product where the scammer gets a commission on each sale.

TIPS

One thing we all know about computers is that they process information very quickly so if it is a bot that is communicating with you, the response by the matched “person” will generally be instantaneous. This is a red flag that you may be not dealing with a real person. While bots are technologically sophisticated and programmed to respond to your messaged conversation, sometimes their responses will be somewhat stilted or generic as if the person was not responding precisely to what you write. You might even test to see if you are dealing with a bot by asking a nonsensical question to which the bot will not be able to answer in an intelligent fashion. If it is a real person, you can then explain that you were merely testing to see if you were communicating with a bot. Finally, if you do end up communicating with a bot, you can use Tinder’s blocking feature to have them removed from your match list.

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