Sharon Stone was kicked off Bumble because users thought she was impersonating Sharon Stone
Users swiping through the dating app Bumble were apparently suspicious when they came across a profile for the Golden Globe-winning actress Sharon Stone. The account was blocked after repeatedly being flagged as fake.
Except it turned out to be real.
"Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary?" the "Basic Instinct" star tweeted Monday after learning she'd been suspended. "Don't shut me out of the hive."
Within two hours of the tweet, Bumble had reinstated the account. "Looks like our users thought you were too good to be true," the company wrote to Stone on Twitter.
The mix-up demonstrates efforts matchmaking apps have taken to eradicate fake profiles, Bloomberg reported. They have faced increased scrutiny in recent months, with the Federal Trade Commission suing Match Group Inc. over allegations the matchmaking giant had used fraudulent profiles to trick people into using its services.
Stone apparently isn't the only celebrity to be caught up in attempts to weed out fake profiles. The British singer Conor Maynard claimed that he was booted from the dating apps Tinder and Hinge due to suspicion his accounts were fraudulent.
"This happened to me on both @Tinder and @hinge . . . any help guys?" he wrote, retweeting Stone's tweet about her Bumble troubles.
Celebrities have their own dating app called Raya. It's members-only and boasts such famous faces as Channing Tatum and John Mayer, The Cut reported.
Yet some still sign up for the dating apps and websites used by regular types. Martha Stewart was on Match.com, while Hilary Duff, Zac Efron and Chelsea Handler tried Tinder.
And now Stone is on Bumble.
Bumble, which requires women to make the first move, pitches itself as a feminist dating app that brings "good people together." It is the second-most popular dating app in the U.S. after Tinder, with millions of users.
The company wasn't aware Stone was one of them until seeing her tweets, according to Vanity Fair.
The 61-year-old actress has been married twice. Her first marriage, to television producer Michael Greenburg, lasted from 1984 to 1987. She married newspaper editor Phil Bronstein in 1998; the pair divorced in 2004.
She has spoken previously about the difficulty of dating.
"I was just not that girl who was told that a man would define me," Stone told Grazia magazine. "I was told that if I wanted to have a man in my life, it wouldn't be an arrangement, it would be an actual partnership. And those are hard to find."
