Dating app stops Icelanders from sleeping with a cousin

By Efrosini Costa

Dating app stops Icelanders from sleeping with a cousin
A new dating app is hoping to stop any accidental incest from occurring amongst Iceland singles.

“Bump in the app before you bump in the bed” is the slogan for a new dating app that’s taken Iceland by storm.

Created by students the Android app uses a national genealogy database called the Islendingabok.

Conceived for a competition of creative apps, the winning entry works by having two people tap their phones together. The phone will then display an alert or warning if the database shows that the pair shares a grandparent – or in other words are cousins.

The app’s three creators, from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, say they plan to further the app’s abilities so that it will also detect whether the two potential partner share mutual great-grandparents.

Unintentional or accidental incest is indeed worthy of concern in Iceland. The Northern European island has a population of around 300,000. A lack of immigration over the years means there isn’t much genetic diversity – most Icelanders will find they are related to each other if they go back a generation or two.

While more than several thousand people have already downloaded the app – nearly all are believed to be Icelandic – some critics are finding it hard to believe that the creation will be anything more than a novelty.

The name of the app is Sifjaspellsspillir, which roughly translates as “Incest Destroyer” or “Incest Spoiler”. But even if two first cousins were to find themselves rushing into bed without prior knowledge of their ancestry, it seems highly unlikely that they would stop to bump their phones.

Developers say they are still unsure whether their incest prevention app had prevented any unlucky matches as yet – that being said one user had left a comment that the app would have been more use to him had he had it last year!

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