A Grumble about Bumble by Mike Senker

I got a message from my daughter asking me what was I doing on Bumble? What? What’s Bumble? Well my ‘trapped at home friends’ I’ll tell you what Bumble is. It’s a dating app and someone had decided to put a picture of me, in my wheelchair, on there as their profile picture. They didn’t use my name – just my picture.
Now, why would you use a picture of a 70-year-old man, in a wheelchair, as a profile picture on a dating app? What sort of date are you looking for? Didn’t make any sense. My daughter responded saying I looked nice to see if there was any response, but I decided it was best to report it and get it removed. In fairness to Bumble, it was removed immediately. Now surprisingly all that didn’t make me grumpy. In fact, I thought it was quite amusing. What did make me grumpy was my conversation with Bumble. I asked them why they just accepted profiles without verifying them by sending real-time photos and they said they ‘don’t require it but strongly encourage it’. I also said I wanted the contact details they had on file for that bogus account. Of course, they refused stating that their guidelines are in place for the safety of all their users and the decision to keep this information private is not one they made lightly.

I told them it was ridiculous that they protected the fraudsters. Why did they have any rights? And that they could do what they like with no redress except having the account blocked if someone notices. This company is valued at over a billion dollars so, of course, they don’t give a crap about anything except revenue. How can it be that the only person that suffers is the person whose picture is used? Bumble says you can report it to the police but can you imagine how interested the UK police are going to be about you having your picture put on a USA owned dating app? We had a few more to and fros but I went as far as I could be bothered with. It’s a very simple fix – anyone who joins any type of dating app only has to verify the picture they put on the site with a passport or driving licence or any other photo ID. It would stop the problem instantly.