State Sen. Caroline Menjivar of Van Nuys is taking a swing at dating app safety with a closely watched proposal that would require background checks on users who sign up with a California ZIP code and slap a prominent warning on profiles tied to certain violent convictions. The bill cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee last Tuesday and is now headed to the Legislature’s privacy panel. Backers say the change would give people clearer red flags about potentially dangerous matches, while critics worry it could misidentify users and fuel even more collection of sensitive personal data.
What the bill would require
Senate Bill 1390 orders online dating service providers to run both local and national criminal background checks when a “California user” creates a profile. That includes searches of multistate criminal-records locators and the U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Website, according to LegiScan. Platforms would then have to place a conspicuous flag on the profiles of users who are registered sex offenders or who have been convicted of violent felonies, assault or battery, domestic-violence offenses, or hate crimes, as laid out in the bill.
Why supporters say it's needed
Menjivar and victim advocates say the measure responds to a pattern of abuse that apps have failed to stop. A 2025 investigation by The Markup found that users accused of sexual violence often resurfaced on major platforms even after being reported. And a 2019 survey published by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations reported that more than a third of women in the sample said they had been sexually assaulted by someone they met through an app.
Pushback from privacy and industry groups
Tech industry groups and privacy advocates counter that the bill, as written, would likely force apps to gather legal names, dates of birth and other identifying details to avoid tagging the wrong person, creating fresh privacy risks on services already sitting on mountains of user data. Jose Torres of TechNet warned lawmakers that inaccurate matches could cause serious reputational damage for users who are wrongly flagged. Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco voted no, arguing the measure could have “significant unintended consequences in terms of people's privacy,” according to CalMatters.
What's next
The Public Safety Committee advanced the bill on a 4–2 vote and sent it to the Senate’s Privacy, Digital Technologies and Consumer Protection Committee for further amendments, according to LegiScan. Menjivar has said she plans to revise the proposal and present a “dramatically different” version to that privacy panel next Monday, as reported by CalMatters.
What it could mean for daters
Even if the background checks roll out exactly as envisioned, they would only surface people with records, leaving out anyone who has never been arrested or charged. That means a clean profile would not necessarily signal low risk, while flagged profiles could push apps to ratchet up identity verification and data collection behind the scenes. Lawmakers say that trade-off, warning users while expanding what companies know about them, is the central tension they will try to navigate as the bill moves through the privacy committee, according to reporting by The Markup.
