Tinder Background Checks: What They Are & How To Use One
Going on a Tinder date can often be a scary thing, and in an effort to help make the app's users more assured about the people they match with, Tinder is now offering its own background check service. In many ways, apps like Tinder, Bumble, and others have made online dating better than ever. Just open an app on your phone, see who you've matched with, and strike up DM conversations with people that catch your interest.
But that's not to say there aren't drawbacks to more prevalent online dating. Someone's Tinder profile may look great on the surface, but in reality, they could be lying about their looks, age, interests, etc. Having a public profile on an app like Tinder can also make you susceptible to unwanted messages. There's no surefire way to stop bad actors from joining dating apps, but there are tools in place to make these negative interactions less common.
Along with features like ID verification and user blocking, Tinder also tries to combat this with in-app background checks. Available to Tinder users as of March 2022, the idea behind background checks is to make users more comfortable about who they're matching with. If someone's uneasy about a matched user, they can run a background check on them to see if they have any skeletons hiding in their closet. Per Tinder's instructions, performing a background check takes just a couple of minutes. From anywhere in the Tinder app, look for the blue shield icon and tap on it. Then tap 'Safety Center' and tap the 'Garbo' button. From here, you're asked to enter a few basic details about your match — such as their name, phone number, and age. If that matched user has information in Garbo's database, users are told right then and there.
Garbo — the company Tinder partnered with to run the background checks — is a nonprofit background check system with "over 1 billion records of violent and harmful behavior." According to a press release from Tinder, Garbo "seeks to democratize access to public safety information, which has traditionally been cost-prohibitive and difficult to obtain, and empowers people to make more informed decisions about who they interact with in real life."
It's worth noting that Garbo background checks look exclusively for records of dangerous and 'relevant' behavior — such as a history of domestic violence, sex offenses, etc. If someone has records pertaining to drug possession, vagrancy, and loitering, those things won't appear in the Tinder background check. Furthermore, Tinder/Garbo background checks exclude personal information "such as home addresses and phone numbers."
If you want to run a background check on another Tinder user, Tinder is offering two free background checks per person. After that, each additional background check costs $2.50 plus a processing fee. Rather than acting as another source of income for Tinder, all of the money paid for a background check goes directly to Garbo "to fund operations and the fees associated with record searches." Tinder background checks are now live for the iPhone and Android apps.
Source: Tinder