Dating Group Asks App Stores to Block Simon Leviev’s Safe Love

The Online Dating and Discovery Association, a UK dating-industry trade body, wrote to Apple and Google on September 22 asking them to refuse or remove any dating app founded, operated or fronted by Simon Leviev. Leviev, born Shimon Hayut and widely known from the documentary The Tinder Swindler, has said he plans to launch a service called Safe Love. The ODDA argues that Leviev’s involvement would undermine trust-and-safety work across the dating sector and could expose users to harm. Its letter asks the app stores to consider the founder’s history before distributing the proposed service. DatingNews reports that Leviev described his knowledge of manipulation as a reason he could build protective features. That is Leviev’s claim about an unreleased product, not evidence that Safe Love is safe or effective.

The ODDA’s chief executive told DatingNews that the organization views the planned app as incompatible with the industry’s efforts against romance fraud. The association did not claim authority to order Apple or Google to act. The sources reviewed do not report a public response from either app store or confirm that Safe Love has been approved, listed or launched. The dispute asks app stores to weigh a founder’s history before a product built on intimate trust reaches users. Leviev says his knowledge of manipulation would help him design protections, but Safe Love has not publicly demonstrated those safeguards. Apple and Google had not publicly responded in the sources reviewed. This is an advocacy request from an industry association, not an Apple or Google decision, a regulator’s order or a new court judgment. Allegations tied to Leviev’s dating activity should not be conflated with the separate fraud conviction referenced by the ODDA.