A wave of new dating ventures is emerging in the UK with a shared mission: removing fake profiles, fraudulent users, and deceptive behaviour from online matchmaking.
Dennie Smith, who owns a hairdressing salon in Croydon, south London, founded the Geek Meet Club after spotting a gap in the market during a trip to a recreated World War One trench.
Surrounded by fellow military history enthusiasts, Smith realised mainstream dating apps failed people with niche interests and were riddled with fake accounts concealing scams.
“A lot of dating sites are just about volume, and they include fake profiles that conceal scams,” she says, explaining her motivation for launching a platform for what she calls “the big market of geeky people”.
Smith vets each applicant personally and declines around 50 per month to protect her 3,300 members. “I’m very good at spotting a fake. But sometimes it’s easy, one person submitted a photo of Boris Johnson!”
The Geek Meet Club focuses on offline events, including monthly quizzes and costume gatherings, drawing heavily from comic book and science fiction convention culture.
“I tell my members to meet in person as soon as possible, go for a coffee in the park, or on the High Street, to find out if the other person is legitimate,” Smith says.
Jo Mason, a City of London banker, launched Cherry Dating after growing frustrated with counterfeit profiles on mainstream platforms. She uses document-verification software to authenticate members.
Cherry Dating requires users to submit a selfie alongside a driving licence or passport. Mason draws on her finance background to justify the approach: “Big banks use this kind of approach to spot anomalies in accounts.”
A significant share of prospective members abandon the sign-up process when they reach the ID check, though Mason considers that an acceptable trade-off for a verified user base.
Mason also commissioned research showing that 47% of British respondents feel no dating app meets their needs, while 40% say dating apps have reduced their motivation to meet someone.
Separate polling by fraud-prevention firm Sumsub, which surveyed 2,000 UK dating app users, found that 54% admitted to using artificial intelligence to enhance their own online profiles.
Cherry Dating scores users for compatibility, allowing members to make more informed decisions before connecting. “If you’re 80% compatible that’s good, you don’t waste time with someone who’s 5% compatible,” Mason says.
Jocelyn Penque, a UK-based Texan dating coach and founder of Dating Classroom, coaches clients on strategy rather than profile construction. Her target audience, she says, are professionally successful people who have not prioritised relationships.
Penque is not opposed to AI assistance in dating profiles, noting that tools like Copilot or ChatGPT can help people who struggle to express themselves in writing.
She does, however, caution that vague prompts produce poor results. “Your prompts must be focused on what really matters, what your values are. So tell Copilot if you want a serious relationship and would like to have a family.”
Penque took a small group of clients to the Azores in May, aiming to create space for reflection away from screens. “We were sitting in the middle of the Atlantic, it’s a completely different space, it’s much easier for them to think about new possibilities there.”
She also cites a personal example of offline deception, recounting a date who claimed to go to the bar and never returned. The barman told her: “I know him, he’s been coming here for three years and doing that.”
Across all three ventures, the common thread is a push to move people off screens and into genuine human connection, whether through verified profiles, niche communities, or Atlantic island retreats.