How a Casual Sex Website Left the Door Open to Teens

Sniffies has been celebrated for resurrecting gay cruising culture but has few safeguards in place to ensure everyone using it is an adult.

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Kelly Weld didn’t know what to expect when she finally managed to unlock her son’s iPhone in February 2023. Still, she had hoped to find an answer as to why the then-16-year-old had recently started failing classes, skipping school and acting out at their home in central Florida.

She found a disturbing explanation in his web-browsing history: For almost two years, her son had been having sex with adult men he met through Sniffies, a website with millions of users and a live map of men looking for hookups that describes itself as the “fastest-growing cruising platform for gay, bi, and curious men.”

Weld’s son had lied about his age when he joined Sniffies. The deception wasn’t hard to pull off: He simply listed a birthdate that made him appear to be at least 18 years old—and then he started chatting with adults. Afterward, he met and had sex with men like Moises Escoto, a then-34-year-old youth pastor at a church north of Tampa, Fla., and Joel Lutz, a then-36-year-old restaurant worker from nearby Pasco County, according to police records.