Microsoft ends Windows 7 security updates

Pour one out for Windows 7, the decade-old operating system that today reached the end of the security line. Some three years after Microsoft called time on mainstream support of Windows 7, the technology giant will no longer provide security updates, leaving the remaining users the option to upgrade to a newer operating system or remain vulnerable to ongoing security threats.

Windows 7 was sunset in January 2020 after more than a decade in service, but Microsoft allowed customers to pay for extended security support to help maintain legacy or older equipment that isn’t easy to upgrade, like hospital scanning equipment and production line systems.

Those extended security updates came to an end today. It’s not known exactly how many Windows 7 machines are still running (or connected to the internet, which increases their risk) but some market share data puts the number as high as about one-in-ten desktop computers.

Without extended security updates, Windows 7 will continue to run, but will no longer receive patches for new and existing security vulnerabilities.

Windows 8.1, the operating system version that succeeded Windows 7, also hit its end-of-support milestone on Tuesday, almost ten years after it was released. Microsoft said it’s not offering extended security updates for Windows 8.1, which may be because of its historical low usage, given many skipped the operating system and updated directly to Windows 10.

Meanwhile, the latest version of Microsoft Edge (version 109), scheduled for release on Thursday, is the latest version to support the no-longer-supported Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

Read more:

Microsoft now has its first official union in the US
Microsoft releases emergency patch for ‘leaked’ Windows 10 security bug
Please don’t use this new Windows 11 feature
Microsoft announces Windows 11, generally available by the holidays

Microsoft ends Windows 7 security updates by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

IonQ acquires quantum networking specialist Entagled Neworks

IonQ, the trapped ion quantum computing company that went public via a SPAC in late 2021, today announced that it has acquired Entangled Networks, a Toronto-based startup that helps industrial and academic users build and optimize multi-quantum-processor solutions, using specialized networking techniques. The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition.

This marks IonQ’s first acquisition and it comes shortly after the company signed a $13.4 million contract to provide quantum solutions to the United States Air Force Research Lab. Maryland-based IonQ says this acquisition will now also give it a foothold in Canada and that the Entangled Networks team will help it work on next-gen quantum architectures.

Image Credits: IonQ/Entangled Netowrks

“In acquiring the Entangled Networks assets, IonQ will benefit from not only some of the top experts in quantum architecture, but also from software tools that we intend to use to drive substantial speed-ups in our system performance,” said IonQ president and CEO Peter Chapman. “We are also excited about the opening of IonQ Canada. This expansion will help us better support the thriving quantum computing community in Canada and further our collaborations with IonQ partners and customers.”

Entangled Networks never announced any institutional funding round, but it was backed by the Jerusalem-based investment platform OurCrowd. According to its homepage, it also counts the likes of Canada’s ventureLAB, MaRS and INO, as well as Microsoft, Nvidia and IBM Quantum among its partners.

Image Credits: IonQ

As its name implies, Entangled Networks focused on networking multiple quantum computers — something the industry as a whole is starting to focus on, too, with Amazon, for example, recently launching a new initiative that focuses on quantum networks. At least at first, it’ll likely take multi-processor networks to achieve some of quantum computing’s promises, after all. Given the nature of quantum computers, it’s possible to entangle qubits across cores, but it takes a special kind of network to make that happen.

IonQ says its quantum networking technology is currently under development and that it expects to show an early version of its system that can connect two quantum computers in 2023. The company’s flagship quantum computer, the IonQ Aria, currently offers 25 algorithmic qubits, with the next-gen Forte system offering up to 32 qubits.

“We believe IonQ is a clear market leader, both commercially and in system performance, which is why our team is so excited to join forces,” said Aharon Brodutch, co-founder and CEO of Entangled Networks. “We are ready to work on amplifying IonQ’s quantum computing solutions to bring even more powerful applications to our customers.”

IonQ acquires quantum networking specialist Entagled Neworks by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

The Easy Company raised $14.2M to build an easy-to-use ‘social’ crypto wallet

The Easy Company has raised $14.2 million in a seed round and launched its “social” crypto wallet to help onboard more mainstream audiences, it shared exclusively with TechCrunch.

Easy aims to combine user-curated profiles with engaging social features so that people can search, navigate and discover the world of web3 on their own. Today, its beta wallet is available to the public on iOS and Android after completing a 30-day private testing phase, Mike Dougherty, co-founder and CEO of Easy, said to TechCrunch.

“We’re very focused on building the consumer layer,” Dougherty said. “We thought of the next chapter of web3 by mainstream adoption and usability.”

The funding round included Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry, Upside and Scribble, as well as angel investors from traditional social media and web3 groups like former heads of Instagram, Novi product and engineering and former executives from Airbnb, Twitter, Uber, OpenTable and Eventbrite, among others.

“We want to deliver to the world a new way to engage with web3 but also a new digital wallet,” Kevin Swint, co-founder and chief product officer at The Easy Company, said to TechCrunch. “We think the digital wallet space is huge and hasn’t moved away from payments and it’s something we can grow quickly in.”

A lot of web3 products and services today are too technical for the everyday person to use, Dougherty said. “If you look at the products and experiences in web3 they may be too technical and built by and for technical users. … We are shifting this to build a consumer product versus a tool, which leads to different design decisions.”

The platform, which was demonstrated to TechCrunch over Zoom, had a similar layout to social media apps like Instagram through elements like showcasing of NFTs, where users can swipe to view both their own NFTs or NFTs of people they “watch,” like Instagram stories.

The similarity was no accident, either, Swint said. “We have a couple key advisers from Instagram and we thought of ourselves as an Instagram-like experience for NFTs in a wallet.”

While there are some traditional media elements in Easy’s wallet, it is “an embrace of both web3 and bringing some of web2 to that, rather than bringing web3 back to web2,” Swint noted. “The innovation around web3 is core to what we do. It’s a decentralized wallet; a lot of the wallet code is open sourced and we want to honor the web3 community to move the space forward.”

The wallet also allows users to link their social identity from other sites and curate their profiles with their own NFTs from multiple wallet accounts and blockchains. There’s a rating system called Signal, which allows users to review anything from NFT collections to marketplaces and platforms — it also allows the community to flag possible fraud in an effort to increase safety. Separately, there’s a search function that allows users to look up terms like “bored” to see both members with that phrase in their name and collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Easy was designed with cross-chain functionality, and currently is compatible with Ethereum and Polygon NFTs, with plans to have more blockchains in the future, Swint noted.

In the app, people can also send crypto and tokens to profiles and real usernames, rather than a random variation of numbers and letters (which often make up one’s crypto wallet address), Swint said.

“We started viewing the wallet as very strategic. The wallet is a personal companion that’s there with you on your journey at every step. The wallet itself can do a lot more to help us navigate, connect and stay safe,” Dougherty said. “We built Easy to be that wallet that we wanted to use that first day in web3.”

The capital will be used to continue building out the social product, but also to expand blockchain support, Dougherty said. “We’re going to work hard on living up to the vision of ‘easy’ and making web3 as easy as what we’re used to in web2.”

The Easy Company raised $14.2M to build an easy-to-use ‘social’ crypto wallet by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Observability platform Chronosphere raises another $115M at a $1.6B valuation

The market for cloud native observability tools remains hot. As with so many new technologies, containerization solved a fair number of problems but also introduced its share of new ones, including a lot of added complexity that is, in part, driven by the dynamic nature of this architecture. That’s both its strength and downfall, so it’s maybe no surprise that tools for monitoring these systems are so important — and well-funded.

Chronosphere, which had already raised $228 million, including a $200 million Series C round at a $1 billion valuation last year, today announced that it extended this Series C round by another $115 million from new investors GV and Geodesic Capital.

The company’s new valuation is $1.6 million. Existing investors Addition, Founders Fund, General Atlantic, Greylock, Glynn Capital and Lux Capital also participated in this round, which The Information first reported earlier this month.

The company says its current list of users includes the likes of DoorDash, Zillow and Visa, with Robinhood, Obsidian Security and Astronomer also now using its service. Last September, the company reported that it had tripled its Annual Recurring Revenue and employee count in the preceding twelve months.

“This funding underscores the crucial market need for powerful cloud native observability solutions to generate positive business outcomes–especially critical now as companies seek more efficient and effective ways to improve customer experiences,” said Chronosphere CEO and co-founder, Martin Mao. “We plan to use this latest investment to bring our forward-looking observability solution to the broader market as we continue to disrupt legacy solutions that provide too little, too late for too much cost.”

In a recent report, the company argued that it could save its customers an average of $4.9 million over three years and that it allowed them to consolidate half of their legacy observability tools. It’s always worth taking these vendor-sponsored reports with a grain of salt, but in the current economic climate, startups that can help enterprises save money are obviously at an advantage.

This is obviously a very competitive market, with everybody from Appdynaics, New Relic, Dynatrace, Instana and dozens of other startups vying for customers — and a fair share of open-source projects like OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Prometheus and Jaeger offering some of the core capabilities for building new ones, too.

Chronosphere says it will use the new funding to “support continued innovation and go-to-market efforts for its market-leading cloud native observability platform.”

“In a cloud native world where businesses are looking for both efficiency and effectiveness, there’s a dire need for organizations to get observability right,” said Sangeen Zeb, Partner at GV. “Chronosphere has cracked the code to tame the data deluge in complex environments and provides better tools that quickly sift through the most meaningful data for better customer experiences and business outcomes.”

Observability platform Chronosphere raises another $115M at a $1.6B valuation by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Data observability startup Metaplane lands investment from YC, others

The need for data observability, or the ability to understand, diagnose and orchestrate data health across various IT tools, continues to grow as organizations adopt more apps and services. (Nearly 10% of businesses now have more than 200 apps to manage, according to a recent Okta study.) In a large-scale survey of IT decision makers published last September, 75% of the respondents said they expected to increase their observability spend in 2022 “significantly” to better plan, deploy and run software.

Observability tools to capture and analyze IT tool data aren’t new — and these days, they’re raising a respectable amount of capital. Monte Carlo, whose platform uses machine learning to infer what data looks like and assess its impact, became a unicorn last May with $135 million in funding. Rival Cribl confirmed its unicorn status with a new round of funding — $150 million — also in May. Other observability vendors with substantial backing behind them include Manta, Observe, Better Stack, Coralogix and Unravel Data.

That might sound like a lot of competition. But it’s not deterring Metaplane, a data observability startup founded by MIT graduate Kevin Hu (CEO), former HubSpot engineer Peter Casinelli and ex-Appcues developer Guru Mahendran in 2020. The three co-founders originally launched Metaplane as a “customer success” product that analyzed a company’s data to prevent churn. After going through Y Combinator, and with the pandemic hitting, Metaplane pivoted but continued to build data analytics-focused tools.

“After several of the tools we built couldn’t be adopted by prospects due to data quality issues, we realized we could apply many of the learnings from software observability to help data teams find out about these issues early,” Hu told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Every day, executives are making decisions based on data that is incorrect. Having more trust in data saves time and money for the executive, data team, and company.”

Metaplane monitors data using anomaly detection models trained primarily on historical metadata. The monitors try to account for seasonality, trends and feedback from customers, Hu says, to minimize alert fatigue.

App integrations in the Metaplane interface. Image Credits: Metaplane

“Every ‘monitor’ we apply to a customer’s data is trained on its own. Unlike most anomaly detection schemes that are built on Meta’s Prophet library, we have our own proprietary approach that we’ve proven to be more effective for this domain given that we can observe data very regularly and can make assumptions based on the type of data being monitored.” (For context, Prophet is an open source algorithm for generating time-series statistical models, which are often used to forecast events.)

Metaplane also attempts to establish lineage from data in a data warehouse — the systems used for reporting and data analysis — and notify stakeholders of issues via their tool of choice (e.g. Slack, PagerDuty, email). From those tools, users can mark any alert as an expected change and Metaplane will learn over time, Hu said.

“Metaplane is the Datadog for Data,” he added. “Data teams at high-growth companies use our observability platform to save engineering time and increase trust in data by understanding when things break, what went wrong, and how to fix it — before an executive messages them about a broken dashboard.”

Hue says that Metaplane is currently being used by more than 140 teams at companies, including Imperfect Foods, the aforementioned Appcues and Reforge. That uptake attracted the attention of investors, apparently, including Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, Flybridge Capital Partners, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah.

Metaplane recently closed an $8.4 million seed funding round from those and other backers, the company announced today. Hu says that it’ll be put toward investing in platform integrations and discovery features.

“With strong traction that proves the self-serve model can work, we felt now was the right time to raise,” Hue said. “We plan to invest in … creating resources that can help data engineers find us.”

Image Credits: Metaplane

Hu didn’t answer questions about revenue, but said that Metaplane, which has a team of 10 employees, hasn’t yet faced roadblocks due to the broader tech slowdown. He attributes the success in part to Metaplane’s freemium model, which lets customers sign up for self-serve service and then opt to purchase a premium subscription.

“Our price points slip below budget freezes and allow us to win deals against our competitors, who must price the cost of their sales teams,” Hu continued.

Data observability startup Metaplane lands investment from YC, others by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Instagram and Facebook introduce more limits on targeting teens with ads

Meta is making some changes to how its apps handle advertising and young users. Under the new rules, advertisers on Instagram and Facebook won’t be able to leverage as much personalized data to target ads to teens. Users under age 18 will also be newly empowered with more choices about what ads they see and why.

Starting next month, Meta will remove the option for targeting advertising to teen users based on gender. The company will also end advertisers’ ability to target personalized ads to under-18 users based on their in-app activity, including who they follow on Instagram and what Facebook pages they like.

After the changes, personalized ads on those apps will only draw on a user’s age and location to determine relevance. According to Meta, location is necessary to assess which products and services are available in a user’s area.

In two months, Facebook and Instagram will also roll out new controls for teen users (kids under age 13 aren’t allowed on those apps — technically). Teens will be given an option to “see less” of a given topic, shaping what ads the platform will serve them.

These changes are the latest effort to build in some after-the-fact privacy protections for Meta’s youngest users. In 2021, Instagram blocked advertisers from targeting teens based on their interests or online activity outside of the app.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission conducted a two year investigation into how Instagram handled user accounts for kids aged 13 to 17, particularly the company’s practice of making those accounts public by default and allowing minors who opted into business accounts to share their phone numbers and other contact info.

Meta was fined around $400 million for those infractions. At the time, the company said that it planned to appeal and criticized the Irish regulator for punishing the company for its past policies (ones that were likely only changed in the face of looming regulation, it should be noted). Kids on Instagram weren’t opted into private accounts or prompted to switch from public to private until well into 2021.

Meta’s incremental changes obviously stop short of turning off ads altogether for teens, a solution that wouldn’t be unreasonable given the risks involved. The company’s decision to stay the course suggests that its youngest users are valuable enough from an advertising perspective that Meta is willing to risk future regulatory wrangling rather than going cold turkey.

Instagram and Facebook introduce more limits on targeting teens with ads by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

New functional tea brand, buoyed by $6.7M in new funding, debuts in Wegmans, Whole Foods

The Ryl Company, a healthy beverage company making a line of functional ready-to-drink tea, raised $6.7 million in funding and is launching into retailers across the Northeastern U.S. in Wegmans and select Whole Foods Market and Wakefern stores.

Functional beverages, those offering healthier benefits then your average drink, are hot right now, especially in the area of soda, with companies like Poppi and Olipop grabbing venture capital. The global functional beverage category is expected to be valued at $173 billion by 2025.

Blodin Ukrella, former data scientist at drink company Bai and chief strategy officer for plant-based protein company OWYN, went out on his own in 2022 and embarked on a nine-month development process to create a tea that had functional tea polyphenols and delivered flavor without sugar or artificial ingredients.

Nineteen iterations later, the company’s proprietary technology creates a formula that delivers 200 milligrams of tea polyphenols in each can and is sweetened by monk fruit and stevia leaf extract, Ukrella told TechCrunch via email.

He said the goal is to pioneer what he called “the additive revolution, meaning adding to everything you do.”

“We are adding wellness-oriented propositions to higher use case beverage occasions, which offers the modern, health-conscious consumer a better-for-you alternative to drink in this tea set,” Ukrella added. “We are rightfully competitive compared to a slew of emerging tea brands on the market that feel like similar iced teas of the past with different labels, and we aspire to build household penetration beyond that legacy consumer.”

Today, Ryl debuts its line with four different flavors: Original Green Tea, Peach Black Tea, Raspberry Black Tea and Lemon Black Tea.

Ukrella did not disclose the strategic investors but did say the capital would be mainly deployed into product development.

“We are extremely fortunate to have raised capital from strategic investors who are extraordinary thought leaders and titans in their own industries,” he added. “Right now, our focus is growing a business with healthy cash flow and margins, reinvesting in our retail and distributing partners, and most importantly, our consumers.”

Up next, Ryl has plans to be on store shelves in nationwide Sprouts Farmers Market by March.

New functional tea brand, buoyed by $6.7M in new funding, debuts in Wegmans, Whole Foods by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

A timeline for startup M&A processes: Key steps and factors to consider

I have recently been a part of a few M&A processes at companies I work closely with. These transactions involved private companies selling to larger companies (public and private) and were all-cash transactions.

This inspired me to chronicle best practices and considerations for founders who are selling their company. In doing so, I hope that founders take away at least one useful insight.

I am grateful and fortunate that I could solicit input on this article from several people, including Theresia Gouw and Mark Kraynak; a few of my partners at Acrew; Ed Zimmerman and Meredith Beuchaw from the law firm Lowenstein; Shan Aggarwal, VP of corporate development, Coinbase; and Art Levy, chief strategy officer at Brex. I hope to also hear from more founders as they read through this.

First, some observations

M&A can be a great outcome for all parties, especially for startup founders and their team. Founders may have conflicting emotions when thinking about selling their company. That is perfectly understandable; in the beginning, many founders hope to build an enduring company.

Not all companies are best positioned to go it alone, and that’s okay.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that there are plenty of good reasons to sell: You can join a “larger rocketship” where 1+1=3; there could be a strong match with an acquirer; burn-out in the startup team; the team or investor wants liquidity; and so on. Further, myriad long-term, standalone companies have been founded by founders who sold or exited their prior companies.

During downturns, think of M&A as a game of musical chairs. The companies that test the market earlier in the cycle (before things have gotten particularly bleak) tend to see better outcomes.

In markets where incumbents are playing catch-up, there is a window when a few companies will get bought. By the time those deals settle, the rest will likely decide to build instead of buying.

Below, I’ve outlined the key steps of a M&A process.

From a timing point of view, founders should plan to conclude a sale in up to nine months. That isn’t to say it can’t happen sooner, but we would counsel that amount of cash buffer. This may require companies to raise bridge financing and/or consider reducing burn. As one of my partners counseled, “Every week you wait to cut spend makes the cuts you will need hurt that much more.”

Image Credits: Acrew Capital

Sourcing offers

This entails months of building relationships. Before a process, finding offers could take anywhere from several weeks to a few months to get all parties engaged and working.
You’ll want to share any offers with your board and key investors to make sure you’re atop all governance requirements.
It’ll be useful to build relationships with bankers as well, because they are in the market and talking to acquirers frequently. This will help you stay top of mind in your industry and be included for everything from conference invites to market maps.

Pre-LOI and evaluating bids

Again, this can take several months. A highly motivated acquirer running a tight process should be able to get through diligence in two to four weeks, but that would be fast in any market. You need to account for competing priorities at the acquirer, any other deals that might come up for their corporate development and personnel schedules.
Your leverage declines after you sign a LOI. In many cases, the LOI puts you into a period of exclusivity with the buyer. That’s why it’s important to nail down the details on the terms right away.
Consider getting representation and warranty insurance (RWI). This will influence how much of the deal consideration is paid upfront and how much is “at risk,” where selling shareholders will be at risk of losing proceeds earmarked or distributed to them.

Post-LOI confirmatory and legal diligence

Generally, diligence at this point should be less strategic and more operational. Legal diligence, however, will be exhaustive, and you may find that more detailed terms are being either negotiated or renegotiated via definitive long-form deal documents. It’s important to plan for this process with your legal counsel.
If you opted for an RWI, the insurer will also run diligence on the company.

A timeline for startup M&A processes: Key steps and factors to consider by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

Buy with Prime, which brings Prime to third-party sites, officially launches in U.S. on Jan. 31

Amazon announced this morning it’s expanding its Buy with Prime service to U.S.-based merchants by the end of the month. The service, which allows third-party merchants to offer Prime benefits like free shipping and returns on their own apps, was initially only available to those merchants who were already using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to handle their shipping and logistics.

The service was first introduced in Spring 2022, with FBA merchants and other select merchants on an invite-only basis.

With Buy with Prime, consumers get fast, free delivery, similar to Amazon.com’s Prime service, plus seamless checkout, and easier returns, allowing merchants to establish their own direct relationships with customers, Amazon says.

Since its April debut, Amazon claims the offering has increased shopper conversion by an average of 25%.

It notes that it measured Buy with Prime’s success by comparing conversions on the sites where Buy with Prime was offered as a purchase option to those where it was not during the same time period. In a press release, Wyze confirmed it was seeing a 25% higher conversion rate on Buy with Prime and noted it has added the option to all items in its catalog. Meanwhile, skincare brand Trophy Skin said the option to check out using Buy with Prime had resulted in a conversion rate increase of over 30%. An electrolyte drink mix brand, Hydralyte, meanwhile reported a 14% increase in conversion.

In addition to the expansion, the retail giant also introduced another new feature, Reviews from Amazon, which will allow Buy with Prime merchants to showcase reviews on their own online stores to help further increase conversions and consumer trust. The feature will offer the ability to display ratings and reviews from Amazon customers at no additional cost. After a shopper leaves a review on Amazon.com, that review will then appear on the merchant’s site wherever Buy with Prime is enabled.

“We’ve been working closely with merchants since the launch of Buy with Prime and have been thrilled to hear the results it’s helped drive for them so far,” said Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy with Prime, in a statement. “We’ll continue innovating and investing in new features, such as Reviews from Amazon, to help merchants of all sizes succeed and give Prime members the shopping benefits they love, whether it’s on Amazon or beyond.”

Haircare brand Sustainable Glam is already planning to offer the feature, it said.

BigCommerce said it will launch the Buy with Prime app in the first quarter, as well, allowing merchants on its platform to add the option without needing to write code.

Buy with Prime will open up to all interested U.S.-based merchants on Jan. 31, 2023 and no invitation will be required at that point.

Buy with Prime, which brings Prime to third-party sites, officially launches in U.S. on Jan. 31 by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Tinder and other Match dating apps will offer in-app tips on avoiding romance scams

Match Group, the parent company to dating apps Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, Meetic and OurTime, among others, announced today the launch of a new campaign that will introduce in-app messages and email notifications to give users tips on how to prevent being scammed online.

Tinder and French online dating app Meetic will prompt users with in-app messages with tips and common behaviors to watch out for. Suggestions include making sure potential matches have their profile picture verified, video chatting with them before meeting in person and learning how to recognize scammer red flags.

Meanwhile, Match, Hinge, Plenty of Fish and OurTime will send out emails and message notifications to users with the same scam-related tips. Starting today, the global public awareness campaign will roll out in over 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, the U.K., India, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. It will last throughout the month of January, but Match Group told TechCrunch it will work to continue pushing the messages to users periodically.

Image Credits: Match Group/Tinder

“Scammers will often play the long game,” Buddy Loomis, Senior Director of Law Enforcement Operations and Investigations at Match Group told TechCrunch. “They want to really capture the victim’s confidence and trust, and they’ll spend a lot of time with them talking back and forth…that’s how scammers build a relationship with that person and make them feel safe. [Then] they’ll ask for money for either a child’s medical bill, visa or plane ticket.”

Another red flag is when a scammer wants to chat via third-party platforms, which usually means they want to chat on an app that isn’t as moderated. Match Group recently launched a feature across its apps that send users popup messages with safety tips if certain words are detected in the conversation.

More and more online daters become victims of romance scams, and the number only continues to rise. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost a staggering $547 million. The Global Anti-Scam Organization provided data showing that the average reported loss in the U.S. was $186,169 in 2022, up from $120,754 in 2021, Match Group wrote in today’s announcement.

While there are many tools that Match Group dating apps use to catch fraudulent and suspicious profiles, there are still people using these apps to scam and steal from users.

Loomis points out that romance scams and other related incidents are significantly underreported, so hopefully the new message alerts with help that side of the issue too. “One of the big messages here is to raise awareness around this type of scam and remove that stigma of reporting. We want members to feel safe and have more come in whether that’s proactive where they haven’t been victimized and had any loss of monetary value, or after,” she added.

Match Group encourages users to report incidents on the platform they’re using as well as contact local law enforcement.

The company’s new dating safety campaign comes almost a year after Netflix released “The Tinder Swindler,” a true crime documentary that centers around Israeli conman Simon Leviev tricking women on the dating app to send him money. Since the documentary premiered in February 2022, Tinder has launched various safety features, such as Garbo-powered background checks and a feature that prevents bad actors from using the “unmatch” feature to hide from victims.

Tinder and other Match dating apps will offer in-app tips on avoiding romance scams by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

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