This article was published on July 25, 2016

This bot promises Tinder verification, but subscribes you to porn instead


This bot promises Tinder verification, but subscribes you to porn instead

There’s a Tinder verification scam going around, and being caught up in it means you may end up spending a lot of cash on porn instead.

It’s basically phishing; a bot tries to talk you into migrating awy from Tinder to be verified. Instead, your personal information and payment details (to verify your age, of course) are gathered, and it signs you up for a bunch of subscription porn websites.

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According to Symantec, the total out-of-pocket for these subscriptions is about $120 each month.

The bot carefully dances around Tinder’s own language, too. Tinder calls them “verified profiles,” but the bot simply asks if users want to be “verified by Tinder.”

Fig7_1-2

It’s all in the fine print, though. While the website users are redirected to does a pretty good job of looking like an official Tinder website, it buries the details. In there, we find the familiar ‘free trial’ for a website with a subscription that kicks in after a week or so.

This isn’t a new scheme, either. Symantec reports that it’s found various Tinder bots promising one thing or another over time, but this one is particularly nefarious. If you need a primer on how to actually get verified on Tinder, we’ve got you covered.

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