Safe dating: what is in the code, not what is in the promise

Location: the biggest risk, and how we closed it

An app that shows an exact distance between two people reveals more than it appears to. Somebody who wants to find a person can stand in three different places, note the distance the app displayed at each, and calculate the exact address. The method is called trilateration, and it has worked on large, well-known dating apps.

On TOKME your position snaps to a fixed grid of about 150 metres before any distance or bearing is computed from it, and bearings are rounded to 15 degree segments. The snap is deterministic: a repeated reading from the same place returns exactly the same value, so many readings cannot be averaged together to sharpen the result.

Your raw coordinates are never sent to another user at any point. What is sent is a rounded distance and a coarse bearing, and that is all there is.

Nobody writes to you without permission

Message flooding is the most common form of harassment on dating apps, and it lands almost always on the same group of people. The solution here is structural: you cannot message somebody who has not accepted.

Every approach begins as a single request with one opening line. You accept, decline, or decline and block. A block hides both sides from each other permanently, search included, and works after a conversation has already opened.

Reporting somebody blocks them immediately, before anybody on the team has opened the report. You are protected from the moment you report, not from the moment it is reviewed.

Content, and what never gets in at all

Every profile photograph and every piece of media sent in a competition is checked automatically before it is stored. Anything identified as nude or sexual is refused and never stored, so it is never shown to anybody. Three refusals suspend the account.

Any suspicion of content involving a minor suspends the account immediately on the first occasion, with no warning ladder. Automatic screening is not perfect, so there is a report option on every profile, chat and call, and every report is read by a person.

And what we cannot do for you

We do not run criminal background checks and we do not verify identity documents. People can present information that is not true, on any app there is.

So: meet in a public place the first time, tell somebody close to you where you are going, travel under your own arrangements, and give financial details to nobody, at no stage and under no excuse. A request for money from somebody you met on an app is a fraud until proven otherwise. In an emergency call your local police.