Yahoo Finance Apple and Google let underage users on dating apps, says Tinder
The parent company of Tinder, Match.com, has accused Apple and Google of endangering children by failing to properly check the age of users who download its dating apps.
Match Group, the world's biggest online dating company, said on Tuesday that the two smartphone giants had refused to share any data on their users' ages and had repeatedly let through users that they knew to be under 18.
Testifying to the US Senate, chief legal officer Jared Sine said that Match, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, had been forced to adopt its own safety checks to plug the gaps in Apple and Google's age verification systems.
His claims came during a fiery hearing in Washington DC investigating whether the two titans have abused their power over the iPhone and Android app stores to suppress competition.
Mr Sine was joined by executives from Spotify and the lost item start-up Tile, who said they had been punished, threatened and financially throttled by Apple after it began developing rival products. Apple and Google denied wrongdoing, saying their strict rules and fees of up to 30pc are necessary to keep users safe.
Mr Sine said: "Safety is actually harmed in the current system. Neither Apple nor Google have been willing to help us with even the most basic safety features. And because of Apple’s and Google’s stranglehold on consumers and their data, it’s difficult for us to conduct even some of the most basic safety checks.
"For example, despite our multiple requests over the years, Apple and Google still allow underage users to download our apps, even when they know the individuals are under 18."
He claimed that minors whose age is already logged in their Apple and Google accounts are still allowed to download Match's apps simply by clicking a pop-up asking them to confirm that they are over 18.
"Those get passed on to our app, and we then have to filter them out through our various age gating systems in order to make sure that we don't have underage users on our platforms," he said.
Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US and European regulators are probing both companies' app stores, which have been dogged by claims of capricious enforcement, double standards and even direct threats towards companies that fall into the platforms' crosshairs.
Separately on Wednesday, President Joe Biden's nominee to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that some app store rules "lack any type of beneficial justification" and should cause regulators to be "especially sceptical".
Several US states have also tried to break the system open, with bills backed by platform critics such as Spotify and Fortnite creator Epic Games. Yet the most promising bill, in Arizona, appears to have been killed by a mass deployment of lobbyists.
Both app stores have patchy safety records, often allowing malware and scams to proliferate for months until they are spotted by journalists or security researchers. Last week, Apple was forced to remove a children's game that actually contained a hidden digital casino.
Mr Sine said the platforms had also stymied attempts to check for registered sex offenders, despite repeated requests. "Again, there has been, while some lip service to it, very little work done," he said.
Google and Apple executives testifying at the hearing did not respond specifically to that, but argued at length that their policies create more value and opportunity for rivals than they take away.
Senators gave their defence short shrift. "After listening to my colleagues. I'm tempted to say Google and Apple are here to defend the patently indefensible," said Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal.
"If you presented this fact pattern in a law school antitrust exam, the students could laugh the professor out of the classroom, because it's such an obvious violation of our antitrust laws."
