Shivam Siddaiya, 15 and John Rho, 16, of Plano Texas, are one of this year’s competitors in the i.Invest National Youth Business Competition. Their tech start-up Profile Cop, is a revolutionary application designed to ensure social media interactions are authentic and safer.
Tell us about your business.
Profile Cop, is a software to make dating apps safer and prevent catfishing. With little to no additional steps. Profile Cop can give apps the ability to verify profiles by checking user name, picture, and age so that every account is legitimate and truthful. Profile Cop also takes this information about a profile and cross-references it to publicly available criminal databases; in order to ensure no criminals are left hidden. When a user registers an account, the inputted user information is analyzed thoroughly by our algorithms. These special algorithms are powered by machine learning, which is a technology that is built to take in large amounts of data and process it quickly and accurately. Our current algorithm is able to process a full account (name, picture, age, etc.) in under four seconds and at a greater than 99.98% accuracy. This is accomplished without uploading additional sensitive documents such as a driver’s license, which can potentially be compromised. This fast, effective verification system is more secure and more adaptable than just using a social media (e.g. Facebook) verification or having the user take several hard-to-replicate photos, which are what most dating apps use currently. Thus, our idea makes online dating a safer, more enjoyable experience.
What inspired the creation of Profile Cop?
John’s cousin is an avid Tinder user. However, she kept running into a problem: the guys she met were not up to par. Often, she would discover too late that they had lied about their age or that they had a criminal history. She did not feel safe meeting these people. So, we were compelled to create a solution. We wanted to develop a service that could effectively verify information on user profiles. When we looked into this we also found that online-dating related sexual assault has risen by more than 450% in the past six years. These alarming numbers and a personal experience close to home is what inspired Profile Cop.
How will Profile Cop impact the world?
Profile Cop keeps all profiles clean and honest to ensure activities such as cat-fishing do not occur. Profile Cop also ensures all users on an app are free of criminal records. These prime features of profile cop allow users to interact safely and openly and without confusion or dangers. It also keeps all apps using the software reliable and helps them meet their companies goals of “matchmaking” or whatever user based interaction service they may provide.
What are the next steps for Profile Cop?
Profile Cop will greatly enrich the community through safety. Everyday people go on dates, taxi-rides, etc. channeled through a variety of apps. Profile Cop will provide a way for all of these great activities the community loves and depends on to stay safe and increase knowledge for all users about who they will be interacting with. Profile Cop will give power to the people, and empower companies to provide the ability for people to stay safe and acquire critical information about each other before meeting.