Member Article

Tinder Reduces Spam Traffic 90 Percent with TeleSign

TeleSign, the Mobile Identity company, today unveiled how it is utilizing its innovative products to help Tinder combat its evolving bot problem—decreasing spam on the social app by 90 percent. Through a combination of real-time risk analysis of phone numbers attached to user accounts and SMS-based verification techniques, TeleSign has helped Tinder protect its user accounts and strengthen its global brand.

In order to preserve the authenticity of its ecosystem, Tinder knew it had to upgrade its security measures. The rapidly growing app chose to work with TeleSign, which delivered a new security process to help Tinder recognize and combat fraudulent accounts. Implementing its PhoneID and SMS Verification products, TeleSign was able to provide the expertise and scale needed to meet the challenges of the erosive bot atmosphere.

“The network that TeleSign has is an enormous advantage and it is exactly what we needed. It is a huge feat to categorize the billions of phone numbers out there and that’s something we could never do. It’s really impressive and has been a great pairing for us,” says Tinder CTO Ryan Ogle.

TeleSign analyzes massive volumes of real-time and historical data and usage patterns on phone numbers to provide a risk assessment score for new accounts being created on the app. These scores are then used by Tinder and Omegle to determine which new accounts should be challenged via TeleSign’s SMS Verification product. TeleSign then sends a time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) over SMS that the user confirms within the app. This ensures the phone number registered to the account is legitimate, prevents bulk registrations and greatly reduces the incidents of fraudsters attempting to create fake accounts.

“Once we had TeleSign in place, we were able to block fraudulent accounts in a much more sophisticated way. It’s been 100 percent accurate and we’ve seen about a 90 percent reduction in spam traffic as a result,” Ogle explains further.

All of these capabilities are delivered via a TeleSign REST API and easily integrated into Tinder’s mobile app, processes and workflows. Across the 196 countries and territories where Tinder verifies and authenticates users, the company has experienced a 20% higher completion rate over their prior vendors. This ensures that not only are fraudsters kept out, but legitimate users are able to seamlessly and effectively verify themselves and create new accounts.

“Tinder is known for its impressive growth and almost ubiquitous brand presence. A robust security force is critical in limiting spam and protecting its reputation. With our expertise and global scale we were able to come in quickly and wipe out a large percentage of Tinder’s spam traffic,” said TeleSign CEO Steve Jillings.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by TeleSign .