Does Tinder Cooperate With the Police?

Yes. Tinder's Safety and Policy Center says it fully cooperates with law enforcement in any investigation. It strongly encourages anyone who believes they were the victim of a crime to report it to the police. On its own side, Tinder says its team investigates reported crimes and tries to identify and block the alleged perpetrator's account. It then checks Match Group's other brands for linked accounts to block as well.

Tinder describes three steps. Its team investigates the report. It tries to identify the account of the person responsible and block it. And it looks across Match Group's other brands for linked accounts to block too.

That last step is the one most men do not know about. A report on Tinder can reach further than Tinder, because the same person may be running accounts on sister apps in the same company.

Tinder's advice points two ways, and both matter. The police can investigate a crime. Tinder can take down the account and look for the others linked to it. Neither one does the other's job. Tinder cannot arrest anyone, and the police cannot close an account on Tinder and its sister apps, so reporting to only one of them leaves a gap.

So if something criminal happened, go to the police and file a report in the app as well. Tell the police the person was met through Tinder, since Tinder says it cooperates with their investigations. Then let each side do its part.

Evidence is easiest to collect before you do anything else. Take screenshots of the account's page, the full conversation, the name as it appears and anything the person sent you. Write down any phone number, payment details or usernames for other apps that came up. If you were sent a payment request, an address or a link, note when it arrived and keep the original message, not only a screenshot of it.

Do this before you unmatch or block, in case the conversation is harder to reach afterwards. Once it is saved, block the account and report it.

If money moved, contact your bank as well, and quickly. Banks deal with fraud reports every day, and the sooner they hear about a transfer, the more options they have.

For men, the crimes that come out of dating apps tend to be about money and images. The most common shape is a romance or investment scam that ends in a transfer. Another is sextortion, where explicit images are used to demand payment. Less often, a date turns out to be a set-up for a robbery.

The robbery version is rare, but it tends to announce itself. The plan keeps moving to somewhere quieter, or to a place she picks at the last minute, or to a private address before you know her. Keeping the first date in a busy place you chose yourself takes most of that risk off the table.

Every one of those is worth reporting, even when the amount is small and even when you think nothing can be done. Your report is part of how Tinder finds the account and the others linked to it.

A lot of men never report sextortion or a scam because they feel foolish. That silence is exactly what these accounts count on.

The people running them often work through many men at once. Reporting is not an admission that you were stupid. It is what gets the account blocked before it reaches the next man. With sextortion in particular, paying does not reliably end it. Do not pay, save everything, block the account and report it.

Most of this is prevented by habits that cost you nothing. Keep chats in the app until you have a real read on someone. Never send money to anyone you have not met, for any reason, however sympathetic the story. Keep explicit images out of any conversation with a woman you have not met. Pick a busy public place for a first date, and make your own way there and home.

a dating coach's framework for how the apps work starts from one idea: a woman's experience on the app is what the company cares about most, because without women on it, men stop paying. That is also why Tinder takes reports seriously. The app wants bad actors gone as much as you do.

Help it by reporting what deserves reporting. Then keep your own conduct clean enough that you are never on the other end of a report yourself.