DateMyAge
DateMyAge

DateMyAge is a global age-positive online communication platform that connects mature singles across borders. As part of the online connection industry, it faces the same trust and safety challenges affecting dating services, social platforms, and other digital communication products, and has a direct view of how those risks are changing.

By 2026, romance fraud is increasingly difficult to treat as a private loss affecting only one user. In 2025, nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to a scam said the contact began on social media, and across all scam categories those reports accounted for $2.1 billion in losses, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Romance scams originating on social media were one part of that total, accounting for $298 million in reported losses.

Separately, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded $929.3 million in losses in its broader confidence/romance fraud category, up 38% from 2024 and the highest total since 2021. The damage now extends far beyond the person who was deceived.

DateMyAge on How the Risk Has Changed

The latest IC3 data provide a more current picture of the financial damage. The agency received 23,159 confidence/romance fraud complaints in 2025, up 29% from 17,910 in 2024. Reported losses rose even faster, increasing 38% from $672 million to $929.3 million.

These totals cover reported cases only. The FTC notes that most scams never reach a government agency, which means the real financial impact is likely higher.

Older users carried a disproportionate share of the recorded losses. People aged 60 and over filed 10,188 confidence/romance fraud complaints with IC3 in 2025 and reported losses of $584 million, which is close to 63 cents of every dollar recorded in the category.

Technology is also changing the scale of deception. Generative tools make it easier to create convincing profiles and sustain personalized conversations across many targets. In 2025, IC3 recorded 626 confidence/romance fraud complaints that referenced AI, associated with just over $19 million in reported losses.

"These challenges are inherent to the industry, which is why continuous improvement has long been embedded in our safety framework," says the DateMyAge Security team. "Our approach is informed by research, regulatory guidance, and established best practices. In line with broader industry standards, we maintain and continue to refine safeguards including identity verification, content moderation systems, safety policies, and user guidance."

How Fraud Costs Spread Beyond the Victim

The direct loss to the victim is the first and most visible level of damage, and the easiest to measure. From there the costs spread outward:

  • Users carry the immediate financial hit. The amounts differ from person to person, but the outcome is the same — funds are gone by the time the deception becomes apparent.
  • Platforms shoulder the loss of audience trust, the cost of moderation, and reputational damage that lands on the sector rather than on any single service. FTC data complicates the usual assumption here: close to 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social platform rather than on a dating service. Responsibility is distributed across the wider digital ecosystem, even though dating platforms remain exposed to the category-wide loss of trust surrounding online relationships.
  • The financial system provides the rails through which stolen funds move. The payment method can materially affect the chances of recovering the money.
  • The wider economy absorbs an erosion of trust in online services as a category, which reaches companies that have never hosted a fraudulent account.

These costs are distributed across the digital ecosystem, but the ability to intervene is not distributed equally. A user sees only one profile and one conversation, while payment providers typically become involved once a transaction is attempted. Platforms can identify patterns across multiple accounts and interactions before money changes hands.

This gives platforms a specific role in the wider response to fraud: they can translate ecosystem-level risk into product-level safeguards. Identity verification, visible trust signals, behavioral detection, and human review can help identify suspicious activity both when an account is created and as an interaction develops.

How DateMyAge Applies Safety by Design

The safeguards outlined by DateMyAge address the point in this chain where a platform can intervene: before a suspicious interaction develops into a financial transaction.

According to a March 2026 company release, introduced additional identity verification procedures for certain members, including verification through government-issued ID and biometric liveness checks. Verification status is reviewed periodically, and a badge can be removed when re-verification requirements go unmet.

DateMyAge says its moderation framework uses anti-scam detection tools to identify suspicious behavioral patterns and flag potentially fraudulent activity for review. The company also says it maintains a dedicated Trust & Safety team and continues to expand specialist training and internal protocols. Among users who attempted verification on DateMyAge and other platforms operated by its parent company, these measures were associated with a 79% decline in fake applicants between 2024 and 2025.

According to DateMyAge, the first 48 hours of an interaction are a particularly high-risk period because fraudsters typically seek rapid financial gain. However, safety monitoring does not end after this initial period. The company says its machine-learning models screen user conversations for malicious links and signs of fraud every four hours, including weekends and public holidays, resulting in six automated screening cycles per day.

For online dating, legitimacy is ultimately a process rather than a one-time claim. A platform cannot know every user's intent at signup, but it can examine how an interaction develops, refer uncertain cases for review, and act when the evidence supports a violation.

DateMyAge's combination of identity checks, continued monitoring, and human review shows how scam prevention can move beyond static profile checks toward the behavior and progression of the interaction itself.

What Platforms Lose When Users Stop Believing

Fraud takes trust first; the money follows. A user who no longer believes an account belongs to a real person has little reason to remain on the service, whether or not that user ever lost a dollar.

Several markers separate platforms that treat this seriously from those that publish a safety page and stop.

Verification against a government document can set a higher bar than a selfie check or a linked social account.

Periodic review adds another layer beyond the initial verification and allows a badge to be removed if re-verification requirements are not met. Behavioral detection tools can identify suspicious patterns and flag potentially fraudulent activity for review.

Another marker is whether a service encourages its users to keep early conversations on the platform, where moderation and reporting tools are available. The FTC describes a common sequence in which a new contact asks to move the conversation off-platform before requesting money.

A platform that loses users' trust risks losing the business built on it. Investment in verification and detection is therefore a condition of operating, not merely an overhead expense. The economics of online deception are therefore changing: the cost is no longer measured only by what a victim loses, but by what platforms, payment systems and the wider digital economy spend when trust breaks down.