Bootstrapping trust in online dating: social verification of online dating profiles

This paper presents the results of a qualitative study on online dating practices. We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and discovered that users are significantly concerned with the veracity of online dating profiles. Next, we present a user-centered design of an interface prototype -- called Certifeye -- that aims to bootstrap trust in online dating profiles by leveraging existing social network data. Users can certify their age, relationship status, and photos, by letting Certifeye verify that reported information corresponds to that displayed on the user's Facebook profile. Finally, we conducted a Mechanical Turk study to assess whether our veracity-enhancing interface successfully reduces users' concerns and found a statistically significant increase in trust by virtue of the Certifeye interface.

Citation

De Cristofaro, E.; Bellotti, V.; Norcie, G. Bootstrapping trust in online dating: social verification of online dating profiles. To be presented at the 2013 Workshop on Usable Security (USEC); 2013 April 1; Okinawa, Japan.