Why we check a government ID

There is a blue tick on nearly every dating app now, and almost nobody knows what it means. It is worth taking two minutes to be precise about it, because the gap between what people assume it means and what it actually certifies is where a great deal of harm lives.

What a selfie check actually proves

The standard implementation asks you to take a live selfie, sometimes while making a gesture or turning your head, and compares it against the photographs on your profile. Some apps have a person review it. Most do it automatically.

This is a genuinely useful feature and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It defeats the most common form of catfishing, which is uploading somebody else's photographs, and it raises the cost of running large numbers of fake accounts.

But look carefully at the claim it makes. A selfie check establishes that the person in these pictures is the person holding this phone. That is all it establishes. It says nothing about who that person is, whether the name is theirs, whether the age is true, or whether they have been removed from the platform three times already under different accounts.

Why the difference matters more here than elsewhere

For casual dating, a face is arguably enough. You are going to meet in a bar, you will find out quickly whether the photographs were honest, and the exposure is one evening.

For marriage-minded dating, the exposure is completely different. People here are looking for someone to build a life with, which means they are motivated to invest emotionally and — this is the part that gets exploited — to keep investing after the first doubt. That combination is precisely what romance fraud is built to find. It is the reason the fraud disproportionately targets people who are widowed, recently divorced, or older and dating again after a long marriage, which is a substantial part of who we are built for.

Every version of that harm depends on one thing: the person doing it being nobody in particular. Not a false face — a false identity, discardable and repeatable. An identity document does not stop somebody being unkind, but it makes them a named, accountable adult who cannot simply reappear next week as somebody else.

How it works here

Every member submits a government-issued identity document. It is handled by a specialist verification provider rather than sitting on our servers as an image attached to a profile, and it is checked before that member can be matched with anyone at all.

The part that matters most is the last clause. Verification is not a badge you can earn later, not an upgrade, and not a filter other members can choose to apply. There is no unverified tier, because a tier is just a room where the rule does not apply. An account that has not passed is never shown to anybody and is never offered anybody, which is why we can say without qualification that both people in every introduction have proved who they are.

What it costs, and why nobody else will do it

A great many people start signing up, reach the identity step, and stop. That is a real cost and we know roughly what it is.

It is also the reason our competitors are unlikely to follow. Adding a document check to a working funnel means visibly fewer signups next quarter, in exchange for a harm reduction that is real but hard to put on a slide. If you are running a product with millions of users and a growth target, that trade is close to impossible to make. We can make it precisely because we do not yet have a funnel worth protecting, and because the people we are built for are the ones who most need it.

This is a window rather than a permanent advantage, and we would rather it closed. If the whole category moved to identity verification tomorrow, we would lose a differentiator and a lot of people would be safer. That is a straightforwardly good trade and we would take it.

What we are not claiming

Identity verification does not make anyone trustworthy. It does not predict whether a person is kind, honest about their intentions, or ready for what they say they are ready for. Any product implying that a badge makes someone safe is selling false comfort, and false comfort is worse than none because it lowers the guard of the person relying on it.

What it does is narrow the problem. It removes the category of harm that requires anonymity, and it leaves the ordinary human business of working out whether you like someone — which is what the rest of the app, and the guided first days, and the questions asked before you ever meet, are for.

Frequently asked

What does "verified" mean on a dating app?

On almost every major app it means a selfie was compared against the profile photos, usually automatically. That confirms the person in the pictures is the person holding the phone. It does not establish who they are, and it is not designed to.

How does Date to Marry verify members?

Every member submits a government-issued identity document, checked by our verification provider, before they can be matched with anyone. There is no browsing tier and no unverified tier — an account that has not passed is not shown to anybody and is not offered anybody.

Is ID verification safe? What happens to my document?

The document is handled by a specialist identity provider rather than stored on our servers as an image in your profile. It is used to establish that you are who you say you are, once. See the privacy policy for what is retained and for how long.

Does verifying identity guarantee someone is trustworthy?

No, and any app implying otherwise is selling false comfort. Identity verification establishes that a real, named person is accountable for the account. It cannot tell you whether they will be kind. What it does is remove the entire category of harm that depends on being nobody in particular.