Dangers of Tinder/Grindr

Dating apps are fun and perfectly safe and lead to great dates, happy relationships and marriage, but a new report has shown that the number of crimes linked to Tinder has increased sevenfold in the UK in the past two years.

The most common crimes reported were of violence and sex offences, including rape, grooming and sexual exploitation of children.

It’s a significant rise and only accounts for crimes that have been reported. The number of unreported incidents could make that number much higher.

There is currently a trial ongoing in the UK, where a man is accused of drugging and murdering four men he met on Grindr between June 2014 and September 2015.

In some cases, offenders have been jailed for trying to blackmail users of Grindr, which is a gay dating app while in another a man was suspected of raping a woman he met through Tinder.

Last August, Daniel Edwards and his partner Kristofer Wagner, from Gloucester, were jailed for blackmail after threatening to expose a married man they met on Grindr.

And former teacher Gary Pearce, from Sidcup in Kent, was jailed for five years last September for grooming a 14-year-old boy he met on Grindr.

In September 2014 the Garda in Ireland said officers in Dublin had arrested a man on suspicion of raping a woman he met through Tinder.

In the same year, Nathanael Foster and Adam Webb, both of Gloucester, were jailed for using Grindr to try and ensnare would-be paedophiles and blackmail them.

 Do we really know who is on the other side of the screen?