For over two years now, ultra-popular dating app, Tinder, has been making headlines. Whether it's some new controversy, or just a commentary of the state of the new app dating phenomenon, it's fair to say that Tinder has captured a ton of attention, especially in Western countries. But you know what the funny thing is? It's actually 'only' the second most popular dating app out there. Enter Badoo, a London-based company that launched its service some 10 years ago in 2006. Back then, Badoo was a site, but it has had a near identical app available for smartphones for some time now. And according to data by app analytics company App Annie, Badoo is actually ahead in terms of popularity—at least on the macro scale. Indeed, out of 50 sampled countries, Badoo was the most popular dating app in 21, while Tinder follows closely with 18. The remaining 11 countries had a different favorite—like Lovoo in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, or Frim in Russia. Interestingly, as far as the Western world is concerned, Tinder is the top dog, with North American and Western European countries preferring swipey Tinder. In Latin America and Eastern Europe, however, Badoo is where it's at. Having used Badoo ourselves, we can attest to its legitimacy. While we've often heard complaints of bot infestation within the app, we've found that most of the people we've had the opportunity to interact with are other human beings. Given Badoo's seniority in the field, and the fact that Tinder is already not far behind at all, Tinder may soon come out on top as the ultimate dating app. Sure, remote regions relatively speaking like South East Asia and Africa are likely to go for local alternatives that better fit the culture, but it seems likely that the swipe-left-for-no-right-for-yes dating app is destined to sit on the throne. Since the past 6 months I and my colleagues worked for this agency based in Surat, Gujarat, India. There is no other project that we work on. Our job is to check and verify images uploaded by the users of Lovoo for any possible stock images images available on Google or internet in general or so. WHAT THE PROCESS IS AND HOW IT WORKS Having said this, it is from the past few months that we noticed that Lovoo has compromised on its standards of verification and has created a different segment on its site to permit stock or so to say stolen images on its websites under the name of NON-PROFILE images that come to us as FEED images. There are 2 sections under which the new pictures come for verification. There was a time when these images were not allowed at all and were deleted or marked as stolen. When we work on Profile we only get pictures uploaded as profile however in FEED everything is approved as stated earlier. This is mostly the case as spammers do not upload their images and use FEED mostly. At this point it is imperative to mention that the actual count ratio of men to women users of Lovoo is 10:1. Also a major female population is either bots, ESCORTS, spammers or fake profiles created by Lovoo marketing team. In very few rare cases only do you find a genuine lady seeking a single male. DAY IN and DAY OUT you receive notifications on your registered email from these fake BOT profiles who actually never respond to you once you have purchased credits. Till the time you do not buy credit, there are very high chances of you getting these mails almost every day and at around the same time. All this is just one side of the coin. Constant attrition of employees is the reason why there is no background check or verification done. It could be a Joe, John or any Tom Dick and Harry as Lovoo is not kept in the loop neither is any employee data shared with Lovoo. Once an ID and password for login is created by LOVOO, it is deemed that the user of that id and password or the employee will go on with the agency forever and ever. In all we have only 12 computers on the production floor. All of which are rental ones. Any and All of the data is easily available on the main PC the 12th one and so-called server cause it has a larger HDD hard drive. This data is easily available to be mailed across to anyone as there is no Internet access restrictions, Firewalls, website restrictions or social media restriction. Mails from any mail box or even for that matter cloud drives can be accessed and this data can be stored anywhere. So DATA SECURITY parameters are NONE. QUALITY CHECK: There is no Quality check as such from our agency QSS whatsoever. There is a weekly dump file created and maintained which has random and imaginative data with errors so that if Lovoo wants, this file can be sent. QC From Lovoo Side There is a set guideline according to which images or uploaded pictures in other words need to be checked. Now Lovoo does a QC on and off once in a while and sometimes on quarterly basis as they are short of QC staff. There is no stated timeframe as such for this QC check. Now a trained agent usually achieves 12000+ count on a daily basis with atlest 5% error rate so if you look at it in numbers it is a minimum of 600 errors. These can be any errors right from stock images to restricted photos. Thats how the verification is done. There is one more aspect in verification PROCESS Whenever a user of Lovoo uploads his picture with a code verification he is entitled to get free credits and he can then chat with any one. Now if someone gets verified wrongly then that person stands the chance to misuse most of the other users data, photos and chat logs. However in this case LOVOO takes least responsibility as long as their work is done. They do not have any parameters for data security whatsoever. Below mentions are some key aspects of the contract points. THE AGENCY WILL NOT KEEP ANY FILES LOCALLY - LOVOO WILL HAVE COMPLETE ACCESS TO THE AGENCY DATABASE - THE CONTRACTOR WILL NOTIFY THE COMPANY ABOUT ANY DATA BREACH OR DATA STORAGE - THE CONTRACTOR WILL TRAIN AND FAMILIARIZE IT'S EMPLOYEES WITH DATA SECRECY. Now the above mentioned points are from a document signed between our agency and Lovoo however adherence to these points is ZERO. THESE ARE BASIC ASPECTS THAT NEED TO BE ADHERED TO AS PER GERMAN GOVERNMENT LAWS WHICH LOVOO AND ITS AGENCY QSS FAIL ON DRASTICALLY. THERE is absolutely no DATA Protection whatsoever. Secondly there are many agents of our agency who have left and gone some place else however our Ops Head and CEO does not inform LOVOO of any such resignations and just continues using the Ex-employees ID and hand it over to someone else. This is merely for the fact that Lovoo may deem our agency unstable and stop working with us. Also there is a clause in this LEGAL doc that states that we cannot have copies of any such pictures however we have a stock of over 80000 + picture of actual users and thousands of spammer or stock images. For obvious reasons I cannot share all of them here. These images can be used as profile images for anyone on any social media site and can be misused in the worst possible manner. We have recently worked on over half a million profile pictures as it was Christmas and new year time. Our agency saved a whole lot of new images and were sold off at a very high rate to buyers from various agencies who use these pictures for various reasons. There are a lot of genuine users and these are most prone to being misused by spammers as actual pictures are hard to find on the internet. Also there are candid moments of people sharing things and fun with their family and kids in specific that they share here. Not knowing the misuse that happens after they upload such pics. There are sites and agencies that buy such pictures and lure Back-office staff employee to give other relevant details so that it can be misused. By the way we also get the names and ages of the users that we verify. So in all we get the NAME, AGE, LOCATION and PICTURE. The most vital details for anyone. The profit for the agency management is not in working for Lovoo but the real icing on the cake is selling these images and the revenue that generates with that sale. A company that buys such data gets the picture, name, age and Location of the person so its a complete package for them. Thats where the privacy clause of Lovoo and the one they make to its users goes for a toss. When we escalated these issues to our management, we were told to mind our business hence we decided to hand over these details to media and news agencies across Europe and America so that innocent users of this site can be safeguarded from spammers and misuse of their personal photos and pics could be stopped. THIS BLOG IS FOR USERS OF LOVOO To know how vulnerable their details and Pictures are. We hope that they understand the aftermath of an identity theft and the impact of sensitive pictures being misused. The claims that Mr. Benjamin Bak made in an interview last year gruenderszene. This team infact is the root cause of a big scam that's coming very soon.