Romance Scam Prevention Act
Key claim: Dating apps must now warn a user if someone who messaged them has been banned for suspected fraud, naming the banned account, when they last messaged, and telling the user not to send money or financial information.
Abstract
(HR2481 · 119th Congress)
Romance Scam Prevention Act This act requires online dating service providers (i.e., mobile applications or websites) to provide users with a fraud ban notification if the user has established an account with the service and received a message through the service from a banned user of the service. The fraud ban notification must include (1) the username or other profile identifier of the banned user and the most recent time when the user who is receiving the notification sent or received a message through the service to or from the banned user, (2) a statement that the banned user may have been using a false identity or attempting to defraud other users, (3) a statement that the user should not send cash (or another form of currency) or personal financial information to another user, (4) information about avoiding online fraud (e.g., a link to another website or a disclosure), and (5) contact information for the provider’s customer service department. The act provides for enforcement of these requirements by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
Latest action (2026-10-20): Became Public Law No: 119-129.
Why this matters
This is the first federal mandate forcing dating platforms to proactively warn individual users about suspected fraudsters they interacted with, converting a historically opaque trust-and-safety signal (account bans) into a required user-facing disclosure. It establishes a sector-specific template — notify the counterparty of a banned bad actor — that could influence platform liability expectations elsewhere, while leaving open how ‘suspected fraud’ is defined and audited.