50/50

Safety Center

Meeting someone new is worth doing carefully. Here's how to date safely, how to spot the common scams, and what the app can and can't do for you.

Last updated: August 2, 2026

In an emergency, call 911.

If you're in immediate danger, call emergency services first. Report it to us afterward at [email protected], but your safety comes before our moderation queue, always.

Before you meet

Talk on the phone first

A short phone call before a first date is the single most useful thing you can do. A real person picks up, tells you the same story twice, and sounds like the profile you've been reading. It tells you a lot about how they treat you, and scammers overwhelmingly refuse to get on a call at all. Someone who has an excuse every time, whether that's a bad signal, a broken phone, or "let's just meet," is telling you something.

Tell a friend

Before you go, tell someone you trust who you're meeting, where, and when you expect to be home. Send them a screenshot of the profile. Share your live location from your phone for the evening. Agree on a time you'll check in, and actually check in.

Meet in public, and stay in public

First dates belong in a busy, public place: a coffee shop, a restaurant, a bar, a park in daylight. Not their apartment, not yours, not a secluded trailhead, not a place you've never heard of. Keep the whole first date public. If the plan changes to somewhere private mid-date, that's a good moment to end the night.

Arrange your own transport

Get yourself there and get yourself home. Don't be picked up at your home for a first date, and don't give out your address. Having your own ride means you can leave the instant you want to, without negotiating.

Stay in control of your drink and yourself

Watch your drink being poured, keep it with you, and don't accept a drink you didn't see arrive. Know your limit and stay well under it on a first date. If you start to feel strange, unwell, or more intoxicated than you should, tell a staff member immediately and get help.

Keep your personal details yours for a while

Your home address, your workplace, your daily schedule, your full name, your finances: none of that needs to come out before you've met a few times. Don't put them in your profile either. Keep the conversation on 50/50 until you actually trust the person; moving to a personal number or another app early is a scammer's favorite first move, and it takes the conversation somewhere we can't help you.

Never send money

No one you have met on a dating app needs your money. Not for a plane ticket, not for a customs fee, not for a hospital bill, not for a "guaranteed" investment. If someone you haven't met in person asks you for money, it is a scam, every time, without exception. Don't send it, and report them.

Romance scams look different from person to person, but the shape is nearly always the same:

  • They push to leave the app fast. Within a few messages they want your number, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Instagram: somewhere with no reporting tools and no record.
  • The feelings arrive far too quickly. Intense affection, "soulmate," future plans, maybe love, all before you've met. It's a technique, not a compliment.
  • They can never meet or take a call. There's always a reason: overseas contract, oil rig, military deployment, doctor abroad, no signal where they are.
  • Then comes the crisis. A medical bill, a stuck shipment, a frozen account, a legal fee. It's urgent, and only you can help.
  • Or the "opportunity." They're doing very well in crypto or forex and want to teach you. The platform they show you looks real. The gains are fake and the withdrawal never clears.
  • The payment method is untraceable. Gift cards, wire transfer, crypto, Zelle, Cash App, a "friend's" account. Real people don't ask for gift cards.
  • Or they want photos. They'll push for intimate pictures, then threaten to send them to your family unless you pay. That's sextortion, it's a crime, and paying makes it worse, not better.

If it's already happened: stop responding. Don't send more money and don't send more photos. Take screenshots. Block and report them on 50/50, and email us. Report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to the FBI at ic3.gov. If you sent money, contact your bank right away. None of this is your fault, and being embarrassed is exactly what the scam relies on.

Trust your instincts

You don't need evidence and you don't owe anyone a reason. Maybe their story doesn't line up, the pressure is uncomfortable, they get angry when you say no, or they won't accept a plan change. If something feels wrong, you're allowed to end the conversation, unmatch, block, or walk out of a date mid-sentence. Being polite is not worth being unsafe. Nobody who deserves your time will make you feel bad for leaving.

The same goes for consent. Consent is enthusiastic, it's specific, and it can be withdrawn at any point, by either person, for any reason. Pressure, guilt, and "you owe me after dinner" are not consent. If someone on 50/50 pressures you sexually, report them.

The safety tools in the app

These are real, they work immediately, and you never have to explain yourself to use them.

  • Block. Instant, silent, and mutual. They disappear from your deck, your reveals, and your matches, and you disappear from theirs. The match closes. They are never told they were blocked.
  • Unmatch. Ends one conversation for both of you. It costs you nothing: no score penalty, no notification drama. It exists to be used.
  • Report. Open the chat, tap the menu in the header, choose Report, and pick a reason: Fake profile, Profile doesn't match photos, Harassment, Inappropriate content, Underage, or Other. You can add a note.
  • Attach the message, if you want to. The report screen has an optional Include their last message toggle. Turning it on attaches the text of their most recent message so our team can read exactly what was said. It's off unless you switch it on, and that excerpt is shared with your consent, never automatically.

Reporting also blocks them, so you don't have to do both. A human reviews every report, and we aim to act within 24 hours. Depending on what we find, we dismiss the report, warn the account, suspend it, or ban it permanently. A ban survives account deletion: we keep a one-way hash of the sign-in identity behind it (the hash, never the raw email address or sign-in id), so a banned person can't delete and re-register to get back in, and there's no way in the app to clear that record. A suspension is not recorded that way, and deleting a suspended account doesn't bar the person from signing up again. A suspension usually has a set length, chosen by the reviewer when they apply it, and lifts by itself once that runs out; a reviewer can also lift it early, or, for something serious, leave it open-ended, in which case it stays until a reviewer lifts it. The full rules and consequences are in our Community Guidelines.

For anything urgent, email [email protected] as well as filing the report.

What verification is, and what it isn't

Before anyone enters the 50/50 pool, they take a selfie with their front camera. A person on our team then looks at that selfie next to their profile photos and decides, by eye, whether it's the same human being. That is the whole check. If the reviewer can't confirm it, another selfie can be submitted, up to three attempts in total.

We want to be extremely clear about what that does and doesn't mean:

  • It is a human looking at two pictures. No software analyzes anyone's face, there is no facial recognition, no liveness detection, and no faceprint or biometric template is ever created or stored. That's a deliberate choice, and the Privacy Policy says the same thing.
  • It is not a background check. We do not run criminal record checks, sex offender registry checks, or any other background screening on anyone.
  • It is not identity verification. We don't check government ID, and we don't confirm anyone's real name, age beyond the birthdate they gave us, job, relationship status, or anything else they've written about themselves.
  • A verified badge means "the photos are probably really them." It does not mean a person is honest, single, or safe. Please read it that way.

The selfies themselves are stored privately and are never visible to another user. A selfie a reviewer turned down isn't thrown away. It's kept with the reason it was turned down, and the next attempt is stored alongside it, so an account can end up holding as many as three. Deleting your account deletes all of them from our storage, along with the rest of your images. The Privacy Policy sets this out in full.

Profile photos are seen by a reviewer during verification, and photos that break the rules can be taken down at any time after that. Later profile edits go live right away, which is exactly why reports matter. If a profile stops matching the person behind it, tell us.

Where to get help

These are US-based, free, and confidential.

50/50 is not a crisis service, and we can't provide emergency help. If you're in danger, call 911 or one of the numbers above first.

Related

Community Guidelines: the rules, and what happens when they're broken.
Privacy Policy: what we collect and what we don't.
Support: contact us, or delete your account.