A girl of 13 told to strip naked on Tinder, UK’s top dating app.So could this be YOUR daughter?
IT HAS recruited millions around the world with promises of easy flirting and rapid ‘hook ups’.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal the popular dating site Tinder is exposing children to explicit and inappropriate adult conversations and potentially placing them at the mercy of sexual predators.
Created just two years ago, the Tinder app is a runaway success, claiming to make seven million matches a day worldwide.
It works by beaming pictures of nearby potential partners to a phone or tablet and inviting an instant ‘yes’ or ‘no’ verdict.
A million Britons have signed up in the past two months alone, while celebrity users include Katy Perry and Sheridan Smith.
The site is said to have revolutionised the world of casual sex – yet it is openly recruiting children as young as 13. We can also reveal that:
Tinder makes no effective checks on the age of new recruits;
The company allows users to indulge in explicit conversations with underage girls, including making requests for naked pictures;
It is impossible to tell if other Tinder users are fellow teenagers or adults seeking to groom young people for illegal sex.
In fact, it is disturbingly easy for adults to masquerade as teenagers on the app. It took our adult investigator just a few minutes to register with the fake identity of a 13-year-old girl. From then on, they were free to ‘rate’ other teenaged members.
As Claire Lilley, head of online safety at the NSPCC, warns: ‘These apps can make a young person vulnerable to potential abusers knowing their current location as well as personal details such as where they live, socialise, work or study.’
For our investigator, the torrent of sexual messages began as soon as she registered. ‘U wanna swap pics?’ asked one. ‘Go on. Just bra. It’s just for me, no one else. I’ll go first if u want.’
Another suggested the girl prepare for a ‘bumpy ride with lots of potholes’. ‘So… nudes?’ asked a third. Whether these messages were being sent by teenage boys or adults was not clear. Most parents would be shocked in either case.
Another person claiming to be 16 said: ‘F****** tired. Been planting
‘Potential abusers can learn personal details’
hedges all day for the last three days x.’ He worked on a hill farm, he explained, continuing: ‘Getting chonged [high on drugs] and driving tractors, whats not to love?’
Tinder says it has comprehensive safeguards in place, pointing out that to sign up, you must first belong to Facebook, which has its own registration process.
On giving their age, new Tinder users are directed either to the main site or a section specifically for 13-17year-olds. But the process is worryingly simple to circumvent.
Our investigator bought a pay-asyou-go mobile and set up a fake Facebook account for a girl called Clo using a photograph of herself as a teenager. This was all she needed to create her fake Tinder registration.
The sexual dangers posed by the internet to young people cannot be under-estimated. Tesco deliveryman Darren Jeffries, 48, posed as a 17-yearold Justin Bieber lookalike to scour the internet for teenagers who he would sexually assault. He has now been jailed for 33 years.
And only last week Oxford theology graduate Timothy Storey was convicted of eight child sex offences, after grooming hundreds of children on Facebook.
The dangers are magnified as the technology advances. Young users now link their social media sites, including picture sites such Instagram, where you can post photos and videos, and Snapchat, which lets users send pictures that are supposed to disappear after being viewed by the recipient. Some vulnerable youngsters even give out their email addresses and mobile numbers.
And there is every danger that some Tinder members might be even younger than 13. Children have demonstrated an ability to circumvent the electronic barriers erected by adults.
According to a recent Childline survey, around 60 per cent of teenagers have been asked for a sexual image or video of themselves, four in ten admitted creating an image, a quarter said they had sent one and an incredible 15 per cent revealed they had sent it to a total stranger.
Seven per cent of Tinder’s ten million users worldwide are under 17.
Giving children warnings is one thing, persuading them to stay away is another. Few other sites have the thrilling directness of Tinder.
Pop star Lily Allen caused speculation about the state of her marriage after revealing she was using the site, while England cricketer Monty Panesar, it is alleged, invited a blonde back-
packer he met on Tinder back to his hotel room after losing to Australia in the Ashes.
But it is for children that Tinder’s temptations cause most concern.
As the NSPCC’s Claire Lilley adds: ‘We can’t turn back the clock – internet and social media use is now commonplace among children and young people, and many use it in a positive way to learn and socialise.
‘But verifying the age of a user is difficult. Consequently, although some platforms are designated for younger users, there is the very real risk of harmful contact with adults.
‘This lack of adequate safeguarding is putting children at risk – service providers and website owners must make it as easy as possible for young people to report upsetting content and behaviour, and take swift action to tackle it.’
Conservative MP David Selous, a father of teenage children who campaigns for strong families, said he was horrified at what our investiga- tor encountered. ‘I would absolutely have concerns about 13-year-olds on Tinder,’ he said.
‘It is very young and huge care needs to be taken. There are many other ways for them to meet boys and girls safely.’
So far, however, the newly minted millionaires behind the app have been unwilling to tackle the darker side of their invention.
Tinder was set up in August 2012 by three American university graduates Justin Mateen, Sean Rad and Jonathan Badeen. They launched it by hosting a party where students downloaded the app at the door, and soon found they had an enormous success on their hands.
Users are asked to flick through the profiles and pictures of other members and rate them for sexual attraction. If you swipe left or hit a cross symbol, the profile disappears with ‘NOPE’ stamped across their forehead. Swipe right, or hit the heart, and it says: ‘LIKED.’ Mutual right swipes result in a match, with a prompt to either send a message or ‘Keep playing!’ A ‘swipe right’ has already entered the global language of dating.
After two years, Tinder boasts an average 500 million swipes a day. Users typically log on 11 times daily.
‘We realised there’s an inherent tension that exists between people,’
‘A huge danger of being pursued by paedophiles’
founder Sean Rad said at the time of launching. ‘You’re either going after a relationship, and you’re the aggressor, and you feel like you’re prone to rejection – or someone’s going after you, and you feel bombarded and annoyed, which means you have to do the rejecting yourself.’
Justin Mateen added: ‘As humans, we have this innate desire to meet people. In the past, social networks were concerned with connecting you with distant members of your network of friends.
‘Tinder is all about connecting you with new people.
‘And we find that valuable, especially because we’re constantly running around and don’t have time to slow down and meet people.’
From wealthy Iranian Jewish families, both Rad and Mateen were included on the Forbes 2013 30 Under 30 List. Their company is now valued at £3billion.
Rad, 27, now has a high-profile girlfriend, Alexa Dell, 20, daughter of computer billionaire Michael Dell. She is known as ‘Tinderella’.
In a prepared statement, Tinder said: ‘There will always be people that will try to violate our terms of service. We have security measures in place that keep the Tinder ecosystem as authentic as possible.
‘Users are able to block and report anyone that is engaging in inappropriate behaviour.
‘We delete any profile that violates our terms of service.’
Tinder’s founders clearly believe that locating their app within the world of Facebook keeps it safe enough. Mateen says: ‘There’s nothing wrong with 13 and 17-year-olds making friends on Tinder.
‘It all goes through Facebook, so if Facebook does a good job of verifying their data, we can rely on their service.’
Facebook commented: ‘ People have to be 13 to sign up to Facebook. In addition, communication between parents and young people about their use of the internet is vital.’ And MP David Selous added: ‘Parents and schools really need to start alerting children to the dangers of potentially being groomed, courted and pursued by paedophiles who are posing as people of their own age group.
‘It is a huge danger.’