What dating platforms tell users about safety.

Joris Van Ouytsel and collaborators · Arizona State University

Evidence: Peer-reviewed research listed through a university profile. Scope: Much of the cited work concerns adolescents and young people, including heterosexual and LGBTQ+ youth.

Limit: These studies do not provide an all-age prevalence estimate or a person-level detector. A pressured request is a reason to pause, not proof of criminal intent.

Douglas Zytko and collaborators · University of Michigan-Flint

Evidence: Emerging peer-reviewed qualitative survey research. Scope: 113 online daters who reported using AI-generated profile or message content.

Limit: The study does not show that AI use causes harm, that undisclosed AI use is always deceptive, or that a particular person used AI.

Christopher Dietzel, Stefanie Duguay, Diana Parry, and collaborators · McGill University, Concordia University, University of Waterloo, and collaborators

Evidence: Academic analysis of dating-app safety approaches. Scope: The work addresses dating-app users and the unequal effects of platform safety approaches, with attention to marginalized users.

Limit: This is not an app ranking, an incident-rate comparison, or proof that every platform feature has the same effect in every community.

Diana Parry and collaborators · University of Waterloo

Evidence: University research project and public education tool. Scope: People navigating dating-app safety, risk, and support; the public launch describes a cross-context mapping approach.

Limit: The existence of a map or guide is not an outcome evaluation. It does not prove that a user will be safe or that one route fits every location.

Liesel Sharabi and collaborators · Arizona State University

Evidence: Relationship and communication research. Scope: Research on mate selection, relationship initiation, dating apps, and online-to-offline relationship development.

Limit: This is not a romance-scam prevalence study and does not establish a universal safe timeline for moving off-app or meeting.

Sanchari Das and Ruba Abu-Salma with collaborators · George Mason University and King’s College London

Evidence: Research-in-progress / funded project announcement. Scope: The announced project focuses on older adults and reports a planned international research scope.

Limit: This announcement is not a completed peer-reviewed finding. It must not be used to claim that older adults are uniformly more likely to be deceived.

Pamela B. Faber · University of Granada

Evidence: Corpus linguistics and language-analysis research. Scope: A research corpus of real romance-fraud exchanges described by the university; the corpus is not a public person-search database.

Limit: Corpus provenance, consent, representativeness, and context matter. We do not publish the corpus, reproduce private messages, or infer intent from wording alone.