SCRUFF Develops Features for Security

Source: afemena.org --- Thursday, May 12, 2016
When users of a gay dating app in saudiarabia reported in 2012 that authorities were utilizing the app to entrap them, SCRUFF took the matter seriously. Officials from the app said that they started sending out pop-up warning messages to alert users of potential risks.   The trend has been adopted by other gay dating apps, especially targeting users in countries where homosexuality is criminalized or is socially unacceptable. Today, if you open the most popular gay dating apps in some Arab countries, you would receive a warning in English and/or Arabic of the dangers you would encounter as an LGBTQ person in those countries.   Gay Travel Advisories (GTA)   But SCRUFF, a US-based gay social network and dating app, took several steps further in the past year. It provides a service called “ Gay Travel Advisories ” to keep app users safer when they travel to places that have criminalized same-sex acts. More specifically, as a user opens the app in a certain location, the service provides him/her with information including punishments, laws and advice concerning risks of engaging in same-sex acts.   “As a public service, we want to keep the gay community safe and increase global pressure for reform in countries where same-sex acts are criminalized,” said Eric Silverberg, CEO and founder of SCRUFF.   The advisories, which concern more than 80 countries currently, were developed based on the annual report of ILGA (the International Les ...