Users of gay dating apps like Grindr and Hornet are at risk of entrapment in countries like Egypt where police seek to crack down on LGBT citizens, The Verge reports.

Undercover police officers will chat with Egyptians on a dating app, The Vergeexplains, and then arrange for their arrest once they egypt using dating apps to trap gay people to meet in person. While homosexuality isn't illegal in Egypt, government officials best new dating app reddit target LGBT individuals with debauchery charges and use arrests and raids as a way to create a public statement, The Verge reports.

App developers have taken steps to help protect users from falling prey to these traps, sending out alerts and encouraging users to keep their profiles anonymous. Grindr, which usually displays how far users are from one another, keeps distances nerds dating site free in the Egyptian version of the app. It has also made options to password-protect the app and make it look more inconspicuous on a phone's home screen.

But more extensive safety features would take major engineering work, The Verge notes, and wouldn't necessarily prevent users from being targeted by law enforcement anyway. LGBT advocacy groups in the region are encouraging users to know the risks, and are additionally providing attorneys for meet-ups in case things go wrong.

The cultural differences between app developers in California and users in Egypt make it difficult to overcome the regional challenges, a digital rights group worker, Dia Kayyali, told The Verge. "You have to address the fact that governments have people who are specifically manipulating the platform to hurt people," Kayyali said. Read more at The Verge.

Hornet or Grindr? … Maybe Tinder? Or a less mainstream, more niche dating application? The choice of apps for communicating with other LGBTQ people is egypt using dating apps to trap gay people. They all work, basically, around the same principle: displaying profiles of other men (or women; there are some dating apps exclusively for or used by Lesbians and transsexual women as well) in nearby geographical locations and allowing for a form of online interaction among them.

But if these apps give the general impression that they are similar, they don’t necessarily allow for the same kind of busty dating site to develop among people and they, most importantly, don’t involve the same risks, which is particularly essential for users in the Arab region where homosexuality is illegal.

Below is a list of the most commonly used dating apps in the region and the risks they involve:

Grindr remains the most popular dating app for gay men in the Arab region. Many would choose to use it because of the wider choice of individuals they can find on it. As it is more popular though, the risks of running into blackmailers, harassers or even undercover police or security agents in some countries could be higher.

The principle of how the app works is simple. A user is asked to create a profile. Then, he can browse through a list of profiles that are organized based on their distance from him. He can initiate chats with other profiles that appear either offline or online when their profile icons display a green dot and also receive messages from other users.  

Grindr allows for anonymity, as it doesn’t make users provide necessarily information about themselves or photos of their faces. Browsing through other profiles does not leave any traces. It’s also possible to block certain profiles and delete the history of chats.

But one has to be aware of the risks of geo-location, which is thought to make it easier for authorities to identify and trap gay individuals in places like Egypt where homosexuals are actively tracked by the police.  

There are many considerations to take into account for a safer use of Grindr or other similar apps.

One has to exercise common sense and caution before sending personal photos through dating apps or agreeing to meet in real life. It is also wise to delete compromising messages and photos as many people are busted when police search their phones. A useful tip: Don’t leave the icons of dating apps very obvious on your phone.

Users should also be aware of so-called spambots. These are fake profiles of good-looking men who try to lure users in order to take them to other apps or websites to steal their credit card information.    

Grindr was launched by a startup development firm in the United States in 2009 but quickly gained worldwide popularity. It is free to download but offers a more developed version with more features for paid users, called Grindr X-tra. As many apps, Grindr makes profit through advertisement.

Hornet functions in a similar way to Grindr with the addition that it asks users to provide their HIV status, even if users can lie about this information. Each user displays one or several photos that can be seen by everyone who is browsing through the profiles on the app. It is not necessary to upload any photos. Users can even choose to upload photos of body parts or even natural scenes or any picture. So as with Grindr, Hornet guarantees some sort of anonymity if the user chooses not to display photos of himself or photos that identify him and it does not require users to link their profiles to other social networks (even if the option does exist). Also like Grindr, it might be regarded as an app that is more geared towards sex dating.

There are many other dating apps that function more or less the same way as Grindr and Hornet like Scruff, Growlr and Planet Romeo, used mainly in North Africa.

Most apps make it possible to report users in cases like abuse, offensive text or image, impersonation and solicitation or spam. This feature helps in creating more secure networks.

Manjam was originally a popular social website for gays before smartphones and mobile apps. Today, the website has developed a web dating app that is not downloadable from an app store. Users can instead access the Manjam dating app directly from their device’s web browser. According to officials from the gay social network, this feature allows for more security especially in regions where homosexuality is illegal.

Manjam founder Mitch Munro says:

“In some countries being caught with a gay dating app installed on a mobile device could mean the difference between life and death. Allowing users to access Manjam.com without having to download an app is essential in countries where being gay is illegal and punishable by imprisonment, torture, or even death.”

Like the other apps, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, Manjam is a location-based app. But its functioning mode may seem more secure. You can search for users within a 5km radius from you but you cannot get more accurate information about the user’s distance from you.

Manjam allows also for having followers and friends within the network, which might help build confidence among users.

Also, what is particular about Manjam is that it is available entirely in Arabic.

Tinder on the other hand jennifer aniston dating black guys a totally different approach. On Tinder, all profiles are linked by default to Facebook accounts. This means that the profile name and pictures on Tinder automatically will be the same as on a person’s Facebook account. Choosing to be on Tinder is an indication that the person is more at ease with showing his face picture publicly, disclosing his identity and sharing private information about himself or herself.

The number of LGBTQ Tinder users seems to be growing in Lebanon. The app is not specifically for LGBTQ individuals but one is asked to mark his or her sexual preference. Tinder is also widely used by Lesbians.

In many ways, paradoxically, Tinder can be safer to use. On Tinder, you can see if someone has common friends with you on Facebook. This adds a layer of security because it makes people you chat with more transparent, less anonymous and, to a certain degree at least, more trustworthy. And since it is used by heterosexuals as well, it does not arouse suspicion as does an app like Grindr or Hornet.

On Tinder, you swipe the profiles you like and if a person swipes back, you get a match and you can start chatting with him or her. So, Tinder does not allow someone to chat with you unless you agree to do it, another feature that puts you in control of managing your contacts.

Happn is another new app that functions in a similar way to Tinder in that it links profiles to Facebook, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people. Even though it’s become more and more popular in Europe, the number of its users is still very low in the MENA region. Happn shows you people you crossed path with, in real-time. So your timeline will show the users who were in the same location as you at a certain time of the day. Happn uses the GPS function on your phone and that of other users to tell you who is within a 250 meter radius from you.

This feature might make it seem less secure for users in the Arab region. It is true that all other apps use geolocation, but Happn uses hyper-location (showing other users within a 250-meter radius) in real-time which may allow to track users in a certain location.

Just like Tinder, Happn, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, pulls data from your Facebook account, which means you can’t change your name and age through the app. You can only do it through Facebook.

Wapa is a dating app for lesbian, bi or curious women. It is similar to Grindr in its display and function mode. All the risk considerations related to other apps apply for Wapa as well. But this app allows additionally for users to exchange video messages, up to 60 seconds long. This feature might be risky to use because harassers might use it to blackmail you.

There are many other apps specifically for women like Dattch, Brenda or SCISSR (requires users to connect via Facebook). But not all these apps are available or popular in the Arab region.

Whatever dating app you choose, some research suggests that all location-based dating apps can be hacked to reveal email addresses, pictures and private messages.

*A device ID (device identification) is a distinctive number associated with a smartphone or similar handheld device.

Fake dating profiles are being used by security forces in Egypt to entrap LGBT+ people and subject them to horrifying abuses in prison, a new report has found.

According to Human Rights Watch, the government in Egypt is specifically targeting the LGBT+ community using social media and apps such as Grindr to online dating texting too much the streets” of queer people.

The dating apps compared group accused police personnel and officers of Egypt’s National Security Agency of routinely picking up individuals off the streets and detaining them in inhuman conditions, often after illegally searching their phones.

Prosecutors use this content to justify prolonged detentions as they rubber-stamp police reports and bring unjustified prosecutions against them. Once in jail the victims are subjected to systematic torture and abuse, including forced “virginity tests”.

“Egyptian authorities seem to be competing for the worst record on rights violations against LGBT people in the region, while the international silence is appalling,” said Rasha Younes, LGBT+ rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

One man, “Yasser”, 27, told the group he was arrested in Giza after chatting to a man on Grindr. “When they came back with a police report, I was surprised to see the guy I met on Grindr is one of the officers,” he said.

“They beat me and cursed me until I signed papers that said I was ‘practicing debauchery’ and publicly announcing it to fulfil my ‘unnatural sexual desires’.”

LGBT+ prisoners in Egypt describe being ‘water-hosed and tied up for days’.

Human Rights Watch shared detailed accounts from 15 separate people, including one from a 17-year-old girl, which reveal the horrific scale of physical and verbal abuse “ranging from slapping to being water-hosed and tied do hwan and moon ga young dating for days.”

Political activist and trans woman Malak el-Kashif, 20, said she was arrested and “put in a cage-like cell” the size of a freezer after attending a protest in 2019. Security forces questioned her about her private life, her gender-confirmation surgery and her relationship with other activists, she said.

“I suffered the worst verbal abuse I have ever encountered by police officers and they forbade me from going to the bathroom for two days. They subjected me to a forced anal exam. They sexually assaulted me,” she said.

One victim was forced to stand for three days straight in a dark room with his hands and feet tied with a rope. Another detainee said police forced her to undergo three separate virginity tests, after which she “bled for three days and could not walk for weeks.”

Nine interviewees said police officers ordered other detainees to abuse them. Eight were victims of sexual violence while five were forced to undergo anal examinations.

Four said they were denied medical care, and eight said they were forced to sign confessions. All were denied access to lawyers.

The shocking report echoes the trauma of prominent LGBT+ activist Sara Hegazy, who took her own life three months ago after struggling with PTSD and depression caused by her torture in a Cairo jail.

“Prison killed me. It destroyed me,” she said after she escaped.

Her tragic suicide devastated the Egyptian LGBT+ community and sent waves of shock and solidarity worldwide. Candlelight vigils were held in cities from Brooklyn to Beirut to honour Hegazy and raise awareness of the struggle she faced.

Human Rights Watch is now calling on Egypt’s partners to “halt support to its abusive security forces until the country takes effective steps to end this cycle of abuse, so that LGBT+ people can live freely in their country.”

— -- When the crackdown began, LGBT people across Egypt began dropping off dating apps, stopped meeting friends and charted their escape.

As police in the conservative, Muslim country rounded up dozens of people over the past two months, intensifying their persecution of the country’s LGBT citizens, a wave of paranoia and fear swept over the community. In interviews with ABC News, half a dozen LGBT people in Egypt described feeling trapped and terrified that egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, too, could end up imprisoned and tortured by the security services.

For one 32-year-old man from Cairo, taking refuge in the desert seemed safest.

The man, who teaches young adults about gender studies, identifies as pansexual, where one does not prefer one specific gender or orientation over another. He moved to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and started volunteering at a guest house. Like others interviewed by ABC News, he requested anonymity, worried he could be detained for speaking out.

“I want to be forgotten for a bit,” he told ABC News. “That’s exactly how I feel right now.”

He said his boyfriend attended a Sept. 22 Cairo concert by the Lebanese rock band Mashrou’ Leila, where several people -- including someone he knew -- held up rainbow LGBT pride flags. Images of the flags went viral on social media in Egypt, prompting anti-LGBT hysteria in Egyptian mass media and, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a human rights group, the arrests of at least 75 people.

At least 20 have have been given prison sentences ranging from six months to six years after “significantly expedited trials,” and at least five men received anal examinations that amounted to torture, Amnesty Internationalsaid. Human rights groups have issued harsh condemnations.

“I didn’t want to go out, I didn’t want to see anyone,” the man from Cairo said, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people. He spends his time binge watching television, avoiding exercise and friends.

“I feel like a reject,” he said. “I lost my belonging to this place.”

Last week, just over an hour down the road from his desert sanctuary, Egypt hosted the World Youth Forum, an international conference in the resort city of Sharm El Sheikh that, according to its website, aimed to promote "peace, prosperity, harmony and progress.” Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah El Sisi, attended and asked the young people participating “to deliver a message of peace and tolerance from Egypt to their countries,” according to his office.

But at the guesthouse, the pansexual Egyptian felt paralyzed and persecuted -- and regretful. He had spent time in Europe and even applied for asylum there earlier this year, ultimately growing homesick and unhappy with the process, coming back to his homeland.

But his countrymen’s hatred threw is talking to women on dating app cheating into depression, he said.

“I wake up every day asking myself, ‘What the f--- am I doing here?’” the man, who has since left Sinai for another Egyptian city, said. “The crackdown awakened the homophobia of the masses. People are cheering for the arrests of the gays.”

Dating app entrapment

Analysts told ABC News the current crackdown comes in the context of increased oppression against a variety of minority, political and religious groups in Egypt since 2013, when the military took control of the government.

LGBT people have been targeted in particular, not only during the past several years, but for decades. It’s been worse lately, though. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a local human rights group, said at least 232 people who were LGBT, or perceived to be, were arrested between 2013 and 2017.

Human rights activists have warned of police officers using gay dating apps to entrap users, luring them to meetings only to arrest them, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people. Other methods, activists said, involve forcing detainees to reveal acquaintances’ names and rounding up people who have visited imprisoned LGBT people.

Users also tell stories of straight civilians using apps to find LGBT people, beating them and blackmailing them for money.

Several gay dating app companies and LGBT Egyptians said they did not know of an instance where police used entrapment in the current crackdown, but they did worry about the practice continuing.

The spread of smartphones and ubiquitous internet use have created new risks, according to Scott Long, a longtime human rights activist focusing on LGBT issues.

“This makes it really easy, on the one hand, for homophobic propaganda from online media to sort of show up in your face, and I think it’s helping to indoctrinate the public,” Long, who lived in Egypt from 2012 to 2016, told ABC News. “And I think, on the other hand, the apps have made gay and trans people more vulnerable.”

Apps move to protect users

A variety of gay egypt using dating apps to trap gay people apps have proliferated in Egypt in recent years, giving LGBT people a new way to make friends and chase romance.

The arrests have led several of the apps to re-examine egypt using dating apps to trap gay people protections they offer their users in Egypt.

The app Hornet sends general safety recommendations to its Arabic-speaking users, which the company said number over one million, like holding video calls before meeting in person and checking in with friends before and after dates.

When users of Scruff travel to one of more than 80 countries with limits on same-sex acts, including Egypt, they receive an alert and information about restrictions. In areas with those advisories, users’ precise locations are automatically hidden, and they can flag suspicious profiles.

“At the end of the day, people -- gay people, straight people -- they’re going to want to connect, they’re going to want to meet,” Eric Silverberg, Scruff's CEO, told ABC News. “No regime, no matter how repressive, can stop that fundamental human need for companionship and for relationships.”

Grindr, another popular app, regularly shares safety tips with its users in Egypt and in other parts of the world, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, and like Scruff, exact locations are not provided in high-risk countries. Its director of equality, Jack Harrison-Quintana, told ABC News the company is working on giving users the ability to change the app’s icon in case their phones are confiscated by the police, and is studying behavior associated with suspicious profiles.

“Our user community is really just our first line of defense against these things,” Harrison-Quintana said. “Educating and empowering them makes a real difference.”

Sean Howell, Hornet’s president and co-founder, said he was so concerned that he flew to Cairo himself for a day last month to meet with users, activists and non-governmental organization workers -- some of whom were in hiding.

Howell told ABC News he was dismayed at how uninformed his app’s users were despite the company’s best efforts, and that generally, their behavior had not changed much in recent weeks.

But the answer, he said, was not encouraging them to give up online dating, particularly when egypt using dating apps to trap gay people virtually may still be safer than frequenting coffee shops or bars popular with LGBT people.

“The consensus was that telling people not to use the app would be punitive to the community,” Howell said. “Meeting online has just become such an important part of a gay person’s evolution, especially for young people.”

Tinder, a dating app that does not target just LGBT people but which Egyptians said was commonly used by them, did not respond to multiple requests for information about protections for its users in Egypt.

Happiness turns to fear

While security services have picked up their persecution of LGBT people in recent years, it was not always clear that the crackdown this fall would grow into what some believe is the worst wave yet.

When Mohamed, a 30-year-old gay man from Cairo, saw the rainbow flags raised at the Mashrou’ Leila concert, he initially was happy.

Then, Egyptian media launched tirade after tirade against LGBT people. The intensity, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, Mohamed and other LGBT Egyptians said, was frightening.

Mohamed quickly deleted photos, text messages and gay dating apps from his phone, and started using an encrypted communications app.

“This crackdown terrified me because I saw them egypt using dating apps to trap gay people people who had nothing to do with the concert,” he said. “They arrested people randomly because the police know gay guys’ meeting places.”

Mohamed said he wants to flee Egypt and has friends who already have.

“I am not only afraid of the police,” he said. “I am afraid of the people even more.”

Harsher penalties proposed

Meanwhile, scores of Egyptian legislators are lobbying for a law that would explicitly criminalize homosexual acts to ensure harsher penalties by replacing a 1961 anti-prostitution law that has been used against LGBT people for decades.

“Homosexuality” is not clearly defined or mentioned in Egyptian law, so authorities have been prosecuting LGBT people under charges of “habitual debauchery” that can send them to jail for up to three years.

More than 60 Egyptian members of parliament have backed a bill that for the first time would explicitly punish those who engage in “homosexual” acts or promote “homosexuality.” The act would imprison violators for up to five years for individual offenses and up to 15 years if convicted under multiple provisions, according to Amnesty International.

“If passed, this law would further entrench stigma and abuse against people based on their perceived sexual orientation,” Amnesty International’s North Africa campaigns director, Najia Bounaim, said in a statement.

‘Miserably depressed’

A gay man in Cairo who attended the Mashrou’ Leila concert told ABC News he knew three people who were arrested. He said the crackdown has overwhelmed him, making him physically ill and leading him to stay away from the internet.

“I’m trying not to be paranoid and just trying to be very cautious,” the man, in his mid-20s, said. “But yes, I’m afraid. I’m definitely afraid for my life. I haven’t been seeing anyone who I don't know.”

He said he felt like a political pawn and was not sure if he wanted to stay egypt using dating apps to trap gay people Egypt.

“It’s funny punk dating site people, at some point, think that they have a say on whether I have a right to exist or not,” he said. “I know people who are miserably depressed now, after the amount of hate speech they egypt using dating apps to trap gay people subjected to in the media.”

While some of the dozens arrested in recent weeks have been released, the social stigma against Dating in netherlands for free people means defendants and their families can continue to face harassment, according to Dalia Abdel-Hameed, the head of the gender program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Often, when LGBT people are arrested, they have not come out to their families, who sometimes reject them, Abdel-Hameed told ABC News.

After 26 men were detained during a round-up at a bathhouse in 2014 -- and were later acquitted -- one man tried to light himself on fire, she said, “because society doesn’t forgive.”

Seeking a way out

While not everyone is ready to give up their life in Egypt, some don’t think they have a real choice.

In 2011, Egyptian Samer Habib, who is gay, moved to Canada to attend college. He returned home once the next year, eventually deciding it was not safe for him to live in his hometown of Cairo as he increasingly opened up about his sexual orientation.

Rather than go back again and likely face discrimination during his mandatory military service -- Egypt has conscription for young men -- Habib applied for asylum in Canada.

He received refugee status in May. Now 24 years old, he lives in Winnipeg, Canada, with a Canadian boyfriend and a job at the University of Winnipeg, but he misses his family -- and the country where he grew up.

“There really isn’t a day that goes by where I don't wish I could go home and go visit everybody,” Habib told ABC News. “But of course, there’s no getting around the fact that the culture is embedded with homophobia, and there’s nothing really I can do to change that.”

‘Hate was always here’

Mohamed, a 22-year-old recent university graduate in Alexandria, is trying to escape. He hopes applying to universities in Germany -- but first learning German -- will put him on a path out of Egypt, where he said he now struggles to make friends because there is so much distrust in the LGBT community.

He still uses dating apps, he said, but exercises extreme caution. “I only chat with people who speak English, which I know sounds a bit elitist, but I’m trying to keep myself safe,” he said.

Raising the rainbow flag did not turn Egyptians against LGBT people in itself, he said, but it exposed his countrymen’s true beliefs.

“Really, the hate was always here,” Mohamed said. “That part never changed. It’s just more open now.”

Living with a disguise

LGBT Egyptians described a feeling of being trapped and paranoid.

“I started avoiding gathering in any means with any of my LGBT friends, in any of their houses,” a 33-year-old transgender man from Cairo said. “I actually went one time, and I had this feeling that, ‘OK, police are going to come any minute now.’”

Transgender people in Egypt are generally viewed through a different lens than gay or bisexual people. Egypt has in recent years allowed treatment for gender dysphoria, although the social stigma can still be strong.

The transgender man from Cairo said he started presenting as a man about 10 months ago and planned to have gender reassignment surgery abroad this month. In the meantime, he has been using his brother’s identity papers, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people his show him as egypt using dating apps to trap gay people woman.

“As long as you are living here in Egypt with a disguised identify,” he said, “as long as people are seeing you as a normal man, they don't know your history, they don't know your case, you don't have any problem.”

‘Queers make an easy target’

Ahmed, a gay man in his late 20s in Cairo, said that LGBT people had been living under heightened pressure ever since the military took over four years before. He said he was socially privileged and could be relatively open with his friends about his sexual orientation.

“I was always cautious,” he said in an email. “Because the danger has been there for years and it is not just restricted to the police, there is also risks of thugs, violence and hate crime.”

He said he had contemplated leaving the country because, no matter what, his life would “always be in the shadows” and that he was not sure if there was “anything left to fight for here.”

“This wave was loud and was loud for a reason,” he said, though observers can only speculate why.

“But it is vital to know that in terms of media frenzy and arrests, queers make an easy target,” he added. “Very few care about us. Very few would be egypt using dating apps to trap gay people to stop this. Even less would stand up for us.”

Screen grab from the video below, showing a gay marriage ceremony.

Though homosexuality is not illegal in Egypt, police have been using social media and smartphone applications to hunt down and arrest gays and lesbians. Two gay Egyptians, who hide their sexuality and live in fear of being arrested, tell us their story.

A week ago, seven men were arrested after they appeared in a video showing a marriage ceremony between two men. The footage showed a gay couple exchanging vows and rings under a traditional canopy on a boat on the Nile, in the presence of a small group of friends. The footage was shared across social media and was picked up by the local press, who condemned this ceremony.

At the beginning of the week, the public prosecutor’s office ordered the two men featured in the ceremony to undergo “medical tests” that were supposed to be able to determine if they were homosexual. However, after the men were “tested,” the authorities admitted that the results showed that they had not engaged in homosexual relations.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Egypt, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people. Despite this, numerous people have been arrested while taking part in festivities celebrating gay unions and accused of “debauchery.” In May, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, for example, four men were arrested during a party organised in Nasr City, located east of Cairo. One of them was sentenced to 12 years of prison, the heaviest sentence ever given to an LGBT person in Egypt.

This photo was published on a Facebook page calling for an end to the persecution of LGBT people in Dating to marriage timeline. The sign reads: “Liberty for Arabic homosexuals! Love is not a crime".

According to accounts given by numerous 100 free us dating sites, police are using gay online dating sites, such as Grindr, to hunt down LGBT people. Egyptian gay rights activists have published numerous messages warning members of the community to refrain from using these applications.

According to several gay rights activists, at least 77 LGBT people have been arrested since October 2013.

"I was chased out of a cafe in Cairo because I was with an effeminate friend"

I’m lucky because my parents and my older brother know and accept that I am gay. At first, when I told my father, he was very angry and kicked me out of the house. But he let me return soon after because he realised that it wasn’t my fault. But outside of this small family circle and a few gay friends, no one knows. I am very careful not to let my secret out because it could get me in big trouble.

In Egypt, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, there is a kind of religious fascism. People think that gays are perverts, that they have no morals and that they only think about sex all the time. I’m lucky because I don’t look effeminate and so I go unnoticed. But when I am with a friend that does look effeminate, people always insult us.

A few days ago, we were sitting in a cafe. When we called the waiter over, he came to our table and asked us to leave the restaurant. We were furious. We asked to see the manager and he said: "Get out of 420 dating sites free I don’t want problems in my café ". That hurt me deeply.

In the current climate, I no longer dare to use applications to meet people. Undercover police agents use the applications to set up meetings with gays in cafes. It’s a trap. Dating a guatemalan girl a week ago, a friend of mine was arrested in this way in Cairo. I still haven’t heard from him. When I tried to call his parents, they claimed he was visiting family in another city. I’m scared he’ll be tortured or raped. Moreover, he’s a fragile person and the police could force him to name other gays… like me, egypt using dating apps to trap gay people, for example.

“Homosexuality is not a crime,” reads this sign. Photo published on Facebook.

"The police aren’t just targeting well-known gay hangouts, they are increasingly raiding homes when they think there is a LGBT party going on"

Since October 2013, there has been a real manhunt for gay people in Egypt. The police aren’t just targeting well-known gay hangouts; they are increasingly raiding homes when they think there is an LGBT party going on.

I think the new intensity of this repression is tied to the political situation in Egypt. Since President Sisi came to power, he has wanted to show Egyptians that he is as conservative as the ousted Muslim Brotherhood.

I am part of an underground group that helps LGBT people in need. When an LGBT person is arrested, we try to get in touch discreetly with their close friends and family to offer them support. We also reach out to lawyers who specialise in human rights to defend them. Gay people who are arrested are often given heavy sentences after expedited trials [Editor’s note: The four people arrested in Nasr City in May were sentenced only four days after their arrest].

On social media, we try to egypt using dating apps to trap gay people people about places that are under police surveillance and let them know that they should avoid egypt using dating apps to trap gay people places. We also tell them to be careful, to not give out personal information online and to avoid any applications that use geolocalisation like Grindr, Hornit, Scruff, Gay Dating, etc.

Every once in a while, we organise gatherings between trustworthy members of the LGBT community in secret locations in Cairo so that we can give out practical advice and information. We hope that those who attend, in turn, will share this information with the gay people they know. We also try to provide counseling services so that they realise that they don’t need to feel guilty and that their homosexuality is neither an illness nor a form of sexual perversion.

The most at-risk people in the LGBT community are the transsexuals because they have to buy hormone injections on the black market, which means that they are not at all regulated. What’s more, these injections are expensive, costing about 150 Lires [the equivalent of 16 euros], and you need to take them several times a week. They often become sex workers to pay for these treatments.

As part of our Facebook campaign, we are asking people who identify with our cause to send us photos of themselves holding a sign with a message of support for people in the LGBT community. We hope that a large number of people join our cause — and not just from Arabic countries, but from all over the world, in order to increase pressure on the Egyptian authorities so that they’ll stop persecuting the LGBT community. I’m hoping for the support of international NGOs. All we’re asking is to live with dignity.

"I am neither a criminal nor am I ill. I am gay. I’m an Egyptian citizen. I’m a normal person, like you" states the person who posted this photo on Facebook.