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10/06/2026 10:35 pm
TL;DR: Dating platforms recorded a 6.3% identity fraud rate in 2025, the joint highest across industries tracked in Sumsub’s Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026, while 84% of UK users said deepfakes make trust harder and 61% reported deception by fake profiles or someone close to them. Trust signals built for human moderation are no longer enough when synthetic personas can scale faster than review cycles.
NHIMG editorial — here’s why we think this discussion matters
By the numbers:
- Nearly two in three users, or 61%, have been deceived by a fake profile or knew a family member or friend who had.
- Romance scams cost UK victims more than £100m last year.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should dating platforms reduce fraud without making signup unusable?
A: Use risk-based verification instead of a single hard gate.
Q: Why do deepfakes change identity risk on consumer platforms?
A: Deepfakes change the risk because they let an attacker create believable identity evidence at scale.
Practitioner guidance
- Reassess onboarding as a trust gate Separate basic registration from higher-trust actions such as messaging volume increases, link sharing, or off-platform contact.
- Add synthetic persona detection signals Use device reputation, image reuse, conversation repetition, and behavioural anomalies to flag accounts that look human at signup but operate like fraud infrastructure.
- Build off-platform migration controls Treat requests to leave the platform as a risk event.
What to expect at the briefing
Sumsub's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Survey methodology and the 2,000-user UK dating app sample behind the trust findings
- Two-part webinar series details on fraud prevention and deepfake trends for ODDA members
- The sector-specific identity fraud report context behind the 6.3% fraud rate
- Practical examples of how fraudsters move conversations off-platform and into financial requests
👉 Read Sumsub's analysis of dating app fraud, deepfakes, and trust risk →
Dating app fraud and deepfakes: what it means for identity teams?
Explore further
11/06/2026 2:40 am
Dating app fraud is an identity governance failure, not just a content moderation problem. The attacker’s goal is to establish a trusted persona, move the conversation off-platform, and convert that trust into financial harm. That means the control failure sits at the intersection of identity proofing, behavioural assurance, and abuse response, not at the level of profile review alone. Practitioners should read this as a warning that trust signals must be governed across the full user journey.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 80% of identity breaches involved compromised non-human identities such as service accounts and API keys, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how quickly identity blind spots become operational risk.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can organisations tell whether their trust controls are working?
A: Look for lower fraud conversion rates, fewer successful off-platform migrations, and shorter time-to-review for suspicious accounts. If fake profiles still progress from signup to meaningful engagement, the control set is too shallow. Effective trust control reduces attacker dwell time before the first financial request or impersonation attempt.
👉 Read our full editorial: Dating app identity fraud and deepfakes are raising the stakes
