Dating app Bumble could be fined after it was caught advertising without permission on the streets of East London
Business Insider spotted adverts for the startup on Great Eastern Street and Charlotte Street - both ads were sprayed in yellow paint on the pavement using a stencil. Embarrassingly for Bumble, the ads included the wrong Twitter handle.
Hackney Council told us that the startup doesn't have permission to paint its ads on the street, and it will either have to remove them itself or the council will charge the company to do it.
Bumble was not immediately available to comment.
Bumble was started by Tinder cofounder Whitney Wolfe following her departure from the company. It works in a similar way to Tinder, but matches expire after 24 hours and women have to kick off a conversation.
The company is based in Austin, Texas but European dating network Badoo was recently revealed to own 79% of Bumble.
The dating app isn't the only organisation found to have advertised without permission on East London streets. British spy agency GCHQ launched a series of "clean graffiti" ads that didn't use paint but instead power-washed part of the street so that the clean pavement showed a message encouraging people to work for the agency. Hackney Council said in November 2015 that the government agency hadn't secured permission for the ads.
