Zoosk Dating App: Meet Singles
Risk Score
High
App Details
Zoosk is a location based dating app which promises to help users find the right person according to their "Behavioural Matchmaking Technology". Once subscribed with their payment plan, users can filter their potential matches in several ways, including location, body type, height etc. The app enables users to chat with each other and arrange real life meetups. The app also contains a "photo verification feature", so that users can submit video selfies in order to demonstrate that they look like their photos.
Why is it a risk?
Dating apps are, by nature, geared towards encouraging users in a location network to chat, flirt and meet up in real life. As such, this is not a suitable app for a child to have on their device. Despite Zoosk's assertion that they have verified over 8 million user photos there is always the potential for danger when conversing with strangers online in adult dating environments. Recent reviews on the app describe meeting people who were not who they appeared to be online, and feeling like they were being scammed by fake profiles to encourage them to pay a higher subscription rate. Zoosk has also been mentioned in news articles worrying about the safety of children who have used false age information in order to sign up to the dating app. On more than one occasion, minors have been sexually assaulted after having met up with a stranger they met online through Zoosk.