Earlier today, in the spirit of World Romance Scam Prevention Day, Tinder along with its parent company Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH) announced that it has partnered with Mean Girls actor Jonathan Bennett to urge users to avoid financial scams and toxic behaviours online.
With this current campaign, Tinder wants to remind its users never to send money to people they have only met on the platform and never in person. Talking about the campaign, Jonathan Bennett stressed the importance of interacting with strangers online with a sense of responsibility.
He emphasised that while we can continue to share memes on the subject on October 03, we also need to engage in conversations and reach out to our peers who have been victims of online scams.
“Fans have a lot of fun celebrating all their favourite memes and quotes every October 3, but it’s also important that we can take this day to acknowledge some important lessons about how we interact with others online,” said Jonathan Bennett.
“We want everyone to continue to recognise this day, while also being more aware of the types of common behaviours of online scammers to watch out for,” he further added. The new campaign aims to squash the social stigma associated with online dating scams that prevent close to 97% of the victims from seeking justice.
Some harrowing experiences faced by some Tinder users have also been documented in Tinder Swindler, a 2022 British true-crime documentary that follows conman Simon Leviev who dupes women into financially supporting his lifestyle. It recounts how he first wooed women he met on Tinder with expensive gifts and then emotionally manipulated them into giving him money to escape his "enemies".
Tinder recently even rolled out an in-app safety campaign in India and this collaboration with Jonathan comes with respect to the public awareness campaign Match Group launched in January.