A trade body representing the online dating industry has done something unusual. It has written to Apple and Google about an app that does not exist yet, asking them to decide in advance that they will not carry it.
The app is called Safe Love. It is being pitched as a dating platform built to protect women from romance fraud. The person behind it is Simon Leviev, the man at the center of Netflix’s 2022 documentary The Tinder Swindler.
The obvious reaction is the one everybody is having on social media. The more interesting question is the one Apple and Google now have to answer, because their rulebooks were not written for it.
The short version
- Simon Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, is planning a dating app called Safe Love, pitched as a platform that protects women from romance fraud
- The Online Dating and Discovery Association wrote to Apple and Google in September 2026, asking them to refuse to list or to remove any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Leviev
- The association describes the prospect as a “very real risk to women”
- Leviev denies the allegations made in the Netflix documentary. He was separately convicted in Israel in 2019 of fraud, theft and forgery, and served about five months of a 15 month sentence
- Safe Love has not launched. Leviev says it will require approval and regulation first, and has not explained how its safeguards would work
- Neither app store has a published rule that screens an app based on who founded it. Both have broad discretion clauses instead
- US romance scam losses reported to the FTC hit $1.16 billion in the first nine months of 2025 alone
What is actually being proposed
Leviev’s pitch is that his understanding of manipulation is a qualification. He has argued that knowing how the system works, from the inside, is what would let him design a platform where that behavior cannot flourish.
It is not an absurd argument in the abstract. Security research runs on it. Plenty of fraud prevention teams employ people who used to work the other side, and penetration testers are paid to think like attackers. The reason the argument does not land here is that it is being made in place of a product.
Leviev has said Safe Love will provide a safer space for women, with verification, moderation and anti-fraud systems. Those three words are where every dating app already claims to be strong. What has not been offered is any detail: what the verification actually checks, who reviews reports, how the moderation team is staffed, what happens to a user who is flagged. Without that, there is nothing to evaluate, which is a problem for an app whose entire proposition is trust.
Why the industry moved before launch
The Online Dating and Discovery Association is a trade association for dating platforms, and its case is a straightforward one about the industry’s collective credibility. Its letter asks Apple and Google to refuse to list, or to immediately remove, any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Leviev, on the basis that it represents a very real risk to women.
Underneath that is a number the industry has been fighting for years. Romance fraud is not a niche crime, and the reported figures have been climbing steadily.
For an industry trying to convince regulators and users that it takes this seriously, a dating app fronted by the most famous face of romance fraud in the world is a branding disaster it does not control. Hence a letter written before there is anything to review.
The record, stated carefully
This part matters, because the story gets flattened constantly and the details are not interchangeable.
The Netflix documentary collected accounts from women who said they met Leviev on Tinder, were drawn into a relationship, and were persuaded to hand over large sums of money. Reported estimates of the total run into the millions. Leviev denies those allegations, and he has not been convicted in connection with them.
What he was convicted of is separate. In 2019, after being extradited from Greece, an Israeli court convicted him of fraud, theft and forgery of documents and sentenced him to 15 months. He served roughly five. He was also banned from Tinder and other Match Group apps in 2022, after the documentary aired.
So the accurate framing is this: a man with a fraud conviction and a globally broadcast set of unproven romance fraud allegations against him wants to run the trust layer of a dating platform. You do not need the allegations proven for that to be a governance question.
What the app store rules actually say
Here is where it gets genuinely interesting, and where most of the coverage stops short. Apple and Google do not have a rule that says “no apps from people with fraud convictions.” Their guidelines regulate what an app does, not who owns it. What they have instead is discretion, written broadly.
| What ODDA is asking for | What the stores actually have |
|---|---|
| Refuse to list an app based on who fronts it | No published rule tests founder identity or criminal history. Review is aimed at the app’s content, behavior, privacy practices and claims |
| Pre-emptive rejection before submission | Neither store reviews apps that have not been submitted. There is no mechanism for a standing refusal |
| Immediate removal if it appears | Both reserve wide discretion to remove apps and terminate developer accounts, including for dishonest or fraudulent conduct by the developer. This is the clause that could actually be used |
| Treat the safety claim as the problem | This is the strongest available hook. Both stores prohibit misleading claims, and a safety app that cannot substantiate its safety features is reviewable on ordinary grounds |
Notice what the last row implies. The route that most likely keeps Safe Love out of the stores has nothing to do with Leviev’s past. It is the plain requirement that an app not make claims it cannot back up. An app marketed as protecting women from romance fraud, with unexplained verification and moderation, is an app making a claim that reviewers can ask it to prove. That is a much more durable basis for rejection than a letter about a founder.
There is a reason platforms prefer conduct rules to identity rules. Identity rules require the platform to sit in judgment on a person’s history, which is a role neither company wants and which does not scale to two million apps. This is the same tension running through the current wave of platform accountability laws, including California’s attempt to fine platforms up to $1 million per child harmed, where the hard part turns out to be defining the standard rather than agreeing that something should be done.
The verification paradox nobody wants to talk about
Set the founder question aside for a moment, because there is a structural problem here that would apply to any anti-fraud dating app.
The main defense against romance fraud on a dating platform is knowing who your users are. Stronger verification means more identity documents, more selfie checks, more liveness detection, sometimes payment or address confirmation. Every one of those steps makes impersonation harder.
Every one of them also builds a database of exactly the material a fraudster would want most: verified government ID images tied to verified faces tied to people who have just told a platform they are lonely and looking. Dating apps are already a high value target for that reason, and the more verification a platform performs, the more valuable the breach becomes.
The question worth asking any safety app. Not “how do you verify users” but “what happens to the verification data afterward.” Is the ID image deleted after the check, or retained? Who processes it, the app or a third party vendor? Is it encrypted at rest, and who holds the key? An app that cannot answer those four questions is not offering you safety. It is offering you a new place to put your passport.
Where the money goes, and why apps cannot fix it alone
The other reason to be skeptical of any app that promises to end romance fraud is that the fraud does not happen inside the app. The conversation starts there and then moves immediately to WhatsApp, Telegram or text, which is where the persuasion happens and where no dating platform has any visibility at all.
By the time money moves, the platform is not involved in any part of the transaction.
Any app claiming to solve romance fraud is claiming to solve a problem that mostly happens somewhere it cannot see. The honest version of the pitch is narrower: better verification reduces fake profiles at the front door. That is worth something. It is not what “Safe Love” implies.
What happens next
Three things to watch.
- Whether either store responds. Neither Apple nor Google has a habit of publicly pre-committing to reject an unsubmitted app, and doing so would set a precedent they would then have to apply consistently
- Whether the app is actually submitted. “About to launch” has been the status for a while, and a dating app with real verification and moderation is expensive to build
- Whether it goes around the stores. This is the part people forget. In the EU, the Digital Markets Act means the two big stores are no longer the only doors, and a web app needs no approval from anyone. We covered the alternative app stores now operating in Europe, and a rejection from Apple and Google is no longer the end of the story it once was
That last point is the one ODDA’s letter cannot address. Asking the gatekeepers to hold the gate only works while the gate is the only way in.
If you use dating apps, this is the useful part
- A verified badge means a document was checked once. It does not mean the person is honest, solvent, or who the photos show today
- The move off the app is the signal. Pressure to switch to WhatsApp or Telegram early is the single most common opening step in romance fraud, because it removes the platform’s ability to see anything
- Money is the line, always. No amount of relationship changes the rule that a person you have never met in physical space does not get a transfer, a gift card code, or a crypto address
- Reverse image search early. It costs nothing and catches the laziest version of the scam
- Report inside the app before you block. Blocking first removes the profile from your view and can make reporting harder, and the report is what protects the next person
- Be wary of refund and recovery offers afterward. Follow up scams targeting fraud victims are common, and the same rule applies as with the automatic FTC settlement payments Amazon is sending out, where anybody asking you to pay a fee to unlock money is the fraud
The bottom line
An industry body asking two American companies to blacklist a person is not going to be the thing that decides this. App stores do not want to be in the business of judging biographies, and they have a better tool available anyway.
Safe Love makes a specific promise in its name. The ordinary review process already requires apps to substantiate the claims they make. If Leviev cannot explain how the verification, moderation and anti-fraud systems work, the app fails on the same grounds any other unsubstantiated safety app would, and no special rule is needed. If he can explain it, that explanation is worth reading on its own merits.
Either way, the answer should come from what the app does, not from a letter about who is holding it.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: Tinder Swindler reveals own plan for dating app that app stores are being pushed to reject
- ICIJ: Tinder Swindler’s plan for a dating app sparks industry backlash
- Global Dating Insights: Tinder Swindler wants to launch dating app to protect women
- FTC: Romance scam guidance and reported loss data
- FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024
