How ReadMe's Member Verification Works?

Overview

ReadMe - High-End Dating App has a membership requirement. This is to prevent identity manipulation and improve the quality of member profiles. New members must verify at least one of the following: career, education, income, wealth, and appearance.

ReadMe is designed to be somewhere in between matchmaking agencies and lightweight dating apps like Tinder. While some lightweight apps allow users to sign up with just a profile picture, ReadMe takes a different approach. We want users to be able to trust that the profiles on ReadMe are real people, seeking a serious relationship, and have the capability for the member of a high-end dating community.

• 1. Verification Guidelines
• 2. Statistics on Verification

1. Verification Guidelines

1.1. Verification Items

There are five different verifications you can attempt to join the community. New members are required to verify at least one item, the most recommended of which is the career verification, as it is more public in nature. If you don't want to verify anything, check out the appearance verification.

1.2. Concerns about Revealing Personal Information

We recognize that this verification process may cause new members to feel uncomfortable about revealing personal information. At ReadMe, we strive to find the right balance between authenticity and privacy. By default, submitted verification materials are destroyed as soon as the profile review is complete to prevent privacy leaks and abuse.

This is a process for reviewers to determine that a new member is a real person and qualified to join the community, so we ask that you provide only the minimum amount of personal information. Also, For more information on our privacy policy, see Privacy Policy.

I showed specific guidelines of how to submit each verification above. And here are some examples how the real members do verify.

1.3. Examples of Rejections

Here are three typical cases why a verification request is rejected:

• Being rejected for uploading a picture of a face or object that is unrelated to what you're verifying for.
• Posting photos of expensive luxury items to verify income/wealth.
• Uploading a photo of a school or company building to verify education/career.

1.4. Examples of Acceptances

Here are three typical cases of verification acceptance without any feedback:

• Providing a screenshot and link to your LinkedIn profile to verify your career.
• Uploading a photo of your business card for career verification.
• Uploading a photo of diploma to verify your education.

We handle a lot of new member verification, and one of the things that we think is easier for us to do, and easier for you to do, is to submit an already publicly published profile, such as a LinkedIn profile.

We remove the material as soon as the review is complete, but sometimes it's hard to convince users who are skeptical to trust us, and it's easiest for us as reviewers not to handle unnecessary personal information. Users can also feel uncomfortable submitting personal information to us, so we think it's easier for them to submit information that's already publicly available, like LinkedIn.

1.5. How to Redact Unnecessary Personal Information

If you have difficulty providing publicly available information, such as LinkedIn, or want to verify items such as income/wealth, please refer to this section.

• You can submit materials that verify your identity (business cards, certificates, salary contracts, etc.) without revealing unnecessary details. Please consider redacting details with an image editor (e.g. 1) or covering them with a piece of paper or something (e.g. 2) to avoid submitting unnecessary personal information.

• Submitted materials must either be self-attested as to authenticity (e.g. 3) or include your phone number (e.g. 1). If the materials do not include your phone number, please write your phone number on a piece of paper (e.g. 2) and take a photo of it overlapping with the submitted materials.

• For appearance verification, you don't need to submit any materials. Existing members of the opposite gender can view a profile photo of you and vote up or down. After voting for a certain amount of time, or after a certain number of people have voted, if you receive a majority of upvotes, you get verified.

If we receive a report of false verification by another member after you have completed the review, ReadMe may request additional verification materials, and if your verification is not re-confirmed, you may lose your membership.

2. Statistics on Verification

I'd like to share some statistics about our users' verification status as of December 2023. The statistics are based on users in Singapore.

2.1. Verification Acceptance/Rejection Rate

Almost 39% of new members were rejected during the signup process. The main reasons for rejection are either the verification rejection cases shared above, or they put something meaningless in their profile bio. About 7% of the members we're reviewing have no issues with their profile bio, but we've given them feedback during the verification process. In many cases, when a member is rejected on initial verification, they don't respond to the feedback and are ultimately rejected. When we give feedback on the verification process, we reject members if they don't submit new material for more than a week.

2.2. Percentage of Verification Categories

Most users verify their career or education, followed by some users who try the appearance voting. I'll also share the pass rate for appearance verification voting below.

2.3. Appearance Verification Voting Acceptance Rate

The pass rate for appearance verification votings is currently almost 50%. Also, the ratio of men and women attempting appearance verification is almost 50/50! ReadMe female members seem to have a higher pass rate for appearance verification.

2.4. Number of Verified Items

While most users only verify a single item, female members seem to be more likely to attempt additional appearance verification votes even after signing up. This is probably because they are trying it for fun. And there are some male members who verify multiple items. According to the statistics, the percentage is not high, but there are cases where they verify up to 3 items.

Please feel free to give any feedbacks about the verification process! We will continue to improve the verification process by receiving feedback from members. In the early days of the service, it seems that the guidelines were not clear, so users were more often rejected or deviated from the verification process. Recently, the process has stabilized a lot, and the verification pass rate seems to be improving a lot, except for the occasional cases like uploading a face photo for career verification, etc.