When a fake dating profile becomes a real-world threat

In Tauranga, young men created fake profiles on Grindr and arranged meetings with gay men.

According to court reporting, the victims were lured to private homes, parks and streets, often late at night, where they were assaulted. Some of the attacks were filmed and the footage posted online.

The summary of facts detailed 13 separate assaults during August and September 2024.

The offending included punching, kicking, stomping and slapping. In one attack, a victim was made to strip naked.

The court material also referred to similar groups operating in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Three men involved in the Tauranga offending were subsequently sentenced in the Tauranga District Court. The offending was described by the sentencing judge as a hate crime.

In another New Zealand case, a gay man believed he was meeting another man through Grindr at a park in Christchurch.

Instead, he was confronted by a group of teenagers.

He was kicked and punched while on the ground and hit in the head with a rock. The attack was also filmed.

More recently, in 2026, a 21-year-old Christchurch man told 1News that he had arranged a meeting through what he believed was another man's Grindr profile.

When he arrived at Woolston Park, he said he was attacked by two hooded men who used homophobic slurs while assaulting him.

He spent two days in Christchurch Hospital with injuries including concussion, a chipped tooth and a fractured leg.

Australia has experienced a wider series of similar attacks.

Victoria Police investigated groups of teenagers and young men who allegedly used fake profiles on gay dating apps to lure victims.

Police said the platforms involved were mainly Grindr, but also included Scruff and Snapchat.

The alleged victims were subjected to offences including assault, robbery, threats, false imprisonment and kidnapping. In some cases, attacks were filmed and posted to social media.

ABC reported in 2025 that Victoria Police had arrested dozens of alleged offenders in connection with this broader pattern of attacks.

In 2024, ACT Police investigated three alleged attacks on men who had arranged meetings through fake or deceptive dating app profiles.

Police said the victims were lured to vacant properties and assaulted by groups.

Grindr subsequently said it was communicating with ACT Police and worked with LGBTQIA+ organisation Meridian to display safety information to users in Canberra.

In 2024, five men were convicted in England for their involvement in an organised series of robberies.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, fake Grindr profiles were used to lure victims to parks in Birmingham.

Victims were attacked, held captive and robbed.

The prosecution said the offenders specifically targeted members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The common issue in these cases isn't simply that somebody lied online.

The online identity created the meeting.

Someone saw a profile, exchanged messages with the person behind it and made a decision about whether and where to meet based on what they had been shown.

But the person or people waiting at the meeting could be completely different.

That's an important limitation of an ordinary online profile.

Photos, a name, a convincing conversation and even a detailed profile do not necessarily establish who is actually behind the account.

Read: How to tell if you're being catfished

Grindr appears frequently in documented cases because it is widely used by gay and bisexual men to connect and arrange meetings.

Other dating, hookup and social platforms can face the same underlying problem.

The platforms connect people. The people abusing them are responsible for the attacks.

Grindr has cooperated with police investigations in documented Australian cases and has used in-app safety messaging to warn users where attacks have occurred.

The issue NoStrangers is interested in is narrower:

How can two people who have met through an online profile establish more about who is actually going to turn up?

Dating and hookup apps are valuable spaces for LGBTQ+ people to meet.

They can also allow meetings to happen quickly and with relatively little identifying information exchanged beforehand.

That privacy can be important.

People may not want their sexuality, dating activity, identity or private conversations exposed.

But the same ability to remain relatively anonymous can be abused by somebody creating a false profile.

The answer shouldn't be that LGBTQ+ people have to surrender their privacy in order to meet safely.

The better question is whether people can establish more trust between each other without unnecessarily exposing their private information.

NoStrangers started with a simple problem.

A profile isn't proof of the person behind it.

A Trust Request gives two people a separate way to verify before meeting.

Instead of relying entirely on the profile where the connection started, one person can send the other a Trust Request.

The recipient completes a live verification and chooses what verified information they want to share.

The person sending the request can verify too.

The aim isn't to replace Grindr, dating apps or the platforms where people meet.

It's to provide a trust layer between meeting someone online and meeting them in the real world.

No identity or photo verification can tell you somebody's intentions.

A verified person can still behave badly.

Verification should therefore be one part of making a decision about meeting somebody, not a guarantee of safety.

Other precautions can still matter, including meeting publicly where appropriate, telling somebody where you're going, keeping control of your own transport and leaving if the situation isn't what you expected.

Read: How to safely meet someone from a dating app

• The person is different.
• The address changes.
• Several people are there when you expected one.
• You're directed somewhere isolated.
• Something simply doesn't feel right.

You don't have to continue with the meeting because you've already travelled there or because you're worried about appearing rude.

Leave and contact somebody you trust.

If you believe you're in immediate danger, contact emergency services in your location.