Most people you meet here will be fine. This page is about the ones who are not, and about the extra risks that come with dating while queer or trans in India. None of it is meant to frighten you off meeting people — it is meant to make meeting people boring and safe.
Before you meet
- Video call first. Five minutes settles whether the person matches their photographs. Someone who refuses every time, for weeks, is telling you something.
- Search their photographs. A reverse image search takes twenty seconds and catches most fake profiles.
- Keep it in the app until you decide otherwise. Numbers and handles are masked in chat for both of you. Pressure to move to WhatsApp immediately is a pattern worth noticing.
- Do not send money. Not for a ticket, an emergency, a customs fee or an investment. Not to anyone you have not met. This is the most common scam on dating apps in India and it always starts with a story.
- Do not send intimate photographs to someone you have not met. Sextortion is common and it escalates quickly. If it happens to you, do not pay — it never stops at one payment. Report it here and to cybercrime.gov.in.
The first meeting
- Somewhere public, and busy. A café, not their flat, not yours, not a hotel room, not a quiet park after dark.
- Tell someone. A friend who knows where you are going, who with, and when you expect to be done. Share your live location if you can.
- Your own transport, both ways. Do not be dependent on them to get home.
- Watch your drink. Order it yourself, keep it with you.
- Leave whenever you want. You owe nobody a full evening, an explanation or an apology. "I'm going to head off" is a complete sentence.
Risks that are specific to us
Blackmail and entrapment. There is a known pattern in several Indian cities: contact on an app, an invitation to a private flat, and then a group demanding money and threatening to tell your family or employer. Meeting in public the first time defeats almost all of it.
If it happens: you are the victim of extortion, which is a crime under sections 308 and 351 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and consensual same-sex relations between adults have been legal in India since 2018. You have not done anything illegal. Do not pay. Contact a queer-affirming legal aid organisation before you contact anyone else, and keep every message.
- Outing. Assume a screenshot is possible. Decide what you are comfortable having on a stranger's phone before you send it, not after.
- If you are not out: set your photos to "only my matches" or "one person at a time", keep your visibility to members only, and leave your area off your profile. All of that is free.
- Phone privacy. Consider turning off message previews on your lock screen.
What a verified badge does and does not mean
It means a person on our team looked at a government ID and a live selfie and thought they were genuine and matched. It is not a background check, a criminal record check or a promise about behaviour. Verification is optional here on purpose — requiring ID from queer and trans people carries its own risks — so plenty of good people have no badge. Judge the person, not the tick.
If something goes wrong
- Block — instant, permanent until you undo it, and they are never told.
- Report — read by a person, and you can block in the same step.
- Keep the evidence before you block, if you might go to the police.
- Email us at our support address. If someone is in danger, say so in the first line and we will prioritise it.
Helplines in India
- Emergency: 112.
- Cybercrime, including sextortion and blackmail: 1930, or cybercrime.gov.in.
- Government mental health helpline (Tele-MANAS), 24/7, many languages: 14416.
- Queer-affirming support: the Humsafar Trust (Mumbai), Sahodari Foundation (Tamil Nadu), Sappho for Equality (Kolkata), Nazariya (Delhi) and Sangama (Bengaluru) run counselling and crisis support. We are not affiliated with any of them and we do not pass them your details.
We are not a crisis service and cannot intervene in an emergency. If you are in immediate danger, call 112 first.