A year-long congressional investigation has concluded that Match Group was slow to keep scammers off Tinder and Hinge, and that some of its fraud-detection systems had gone years without updates, The Record reported Wednesday. The findings put a new kind of question to consumer platforms: not only whether they screen for fraud, but how current and effective that screening is as AI makes fake profiles cheaper to produce.

What Happened

The Joint Economic Committee released the results of its investigation Tuesday, covering Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish and other Match Group services, according to The Record. The Record identified Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., as the committee's ranking member and quoted her on the findings. The report is titled "Outmatched," according to its file name; The Primary Wire was unable to open the document on the committee's website, so the details below come from The Record's account.

According to The Record, the report found that about 1.5 million scammers and other bad actors matched with legitimate users on Tinder and Hinge in the first nine months of 2025. On Tinder, the number of times the median scammer's profile was viewed rose more than 700% between May 2024 and December 2025, and the report says Match Group knew Tinder was more likely to show a scammer's profile than a regular user's.

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Internal documents cited in the report indicated that some Tinder detection models had not been updated in years. An AI safety researcher quoted in the report said such models need retraining at least monthly. Match Group introduced a newer AI model to screen profiles for scammers in early 2026, after pressure from the committee, The Record reported.

Yoel Roth, a senior Match Group official who was interviewed by investigators, said the report mischaracterizes the company's security investments. Another Match Group official called the claim about outdated models "false and misleading," The Record reported. He pointed to Face Check, a video-selfie verification step introduced in October 2025 for new Tinder users and since extended to Hinge. Match Group told investigators that pilots of the tool cut users' interactions with scam accounts by 70% in the U.S.

Hassan said the company had made some progress but should have acted sooner, especially as AI makes it easier to create fake profiles at scale, according to The Record.

Why It Matters

Romance scams cost Americans about $1.5 billion last year, according to Federal Trade Commission data cited by The Record. A dating platform's own screening decides whether a scam profile reaches a user at all, which is why lawmakers are treating it as a consumer-protection issue.

The report's emphasis on model retraining is the detail boards and risk officers at any consumer platform should note. Lawmakers are no longer asking only whether a company has fraud tools; they are asking how often those tools are updated, whether internal metrics showed the problem growing, and when executives acted. Internal documents showing a known gap between risk data and the response can carry weight in later lawsuits or regulatory inquiries.

The case also illustrates a wider tension. Identity checks such as video selfies can cut fraud, but they add friction for genuine users and require collecting biometric data, which brings its own privacy and security obligations.

What to Watch

The Senate last month unanimously passed bipartisan legislation that would require dating apps to notify users who interacted with a scammer, even if the scammer's account was later banned, The Record reported. The next step is whether the House takes it up. Also watch whether Match Group publishes data on how its newer detection model and Face Check perform at scale, and whether other committees or the FTC press similar questions on other platforms where AI-generated profiles are spreading.