I/O

Lumen, the Dating App for Older People, Is a Prime Target for Scammers

But the app boasts innovative security features the rest of the industry should take note of

Lux Alptraum

Published in

OneZero

5 min readAug 15, 2019

When Andi, 52, got divorced a few years ago, she did what many newly single people do: She signed up for dating apps. Over the course of a few years, she made her way through Tinder, Match, OkCupid, JDate, and many more, shifting from app to app as her mood dictated. “I tried Match — that did not work for my age range,” Andi says. “Tinder at my age range was mostly relationships. It wasn’t hookups… People in their twenties tell me that Tinder and OkCupid are for hookups. At my age, it wasn’t like that.”

Although dating apps are assumed to be a young person’s game, older daters are increasingly going online to find love. According to the most recent Pew Research on the topic, usage of online dating apps and sites doubled between 2013 and 2015 for people between the ages of 55 and 64. And yet most dating apps utterly ignore this population.

Though apps like Bumble and Tinder are ostensibly for all ages, it’s no secret that younger people are their main target — when was the last time you saw gray hair or wrinkles in a Bumble ad? Meanwhile, 50-plus-focused platforms like OurTime and SilverSingles seem stuck in the past, catering to technophobes who favor web-based interaction rather than apps.

Then there’s Lumen, a dating app app restricted to users over 50 and designed with the specific needs of older daters in mind. After a limited launch last year, Lumen debuted in the United States in February and, according to founder Antoine Argouges, recently saw its 1 millionth download.

Lumen promises older daters something different, and as a part of Magic Lab (the parent company of Bumble, Badoo, and Chappy), it has the backing to attract a sizable number of users. But what makes a dating app specifically suited to the needs of older singles? Argouges — whose résumé includes stints at Badoo, Match, and Bumble — feels that limiting the app to people over 50 is already an important start, since it allows Lumen’s team to home in on the specific needs of the group’s various members.