(Yicai Global) Jan. 14 -- Blued, China's biggest social app for the gay community, has banned all suspicious accounts, which were actually minors claiming to be adults.

Blued is discussing technical solutions with service providers in an effort to link to a third-party identity verification system, operator Beijing Blue City Brothers Cultural Media said in a statement on Jan. 12.

The app, which has over 40 million users worldwide, has no identity checking system, which means all information, including age, can be a sham, Caixin Weekly magazine revealed in a cover story on Jan. 5. It said adolescents are visible everywhere in the app, including junior and senior high school communities. The report also drew attention to the app's vulnerabilities in protecting the underage and preventing HIV/AIDS, and said bots stalk the platform touting pornography and illegal drugs.

The app stopped accepting new registrations for a week on Jan. 6, and began screening texts, pictures and groups with teenage users.

Blued has taken a series of actions after the publication of Caixin Weekly's report, including banning accounts and blocking correspondences, the statement said. It also stopped providing group services and 'flash picturing,' where photos are deleted after browsing. The operator has also upgraded the app. The latest one bans underage people from registering and carries an AIDS warning. 

The app also updated its ID verification system and said it will optimize algorithms and ensure that the artificial intelligence technology can recognize adolescents. 

Its technical teams are working on finding solutions with qualified service providers to establish a user's age during the registration process by connecting the app to third-party ID verification or multidimensional Big Data systems. It intends to optimize measures to cope with the issue of youth protection, the company added.

Online Addiction

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings has also taken measures to restrict the amount of time teenagers spend gaming to ensure they don't get addicted to online games. These measures include compulsory real-name verification as well as facial recognition to authenticate users during login.

Former policeman Geng Le founded Blued in 2012 after first starting a gay dating website called Pale Blue Memories in 2000. Blued has since expanded to encompass the largest gay community in China and has over 40 million registered users in 193 countries and regions, of whom 30 percent are overseas.

Beijing Blue City Brothers has secured more than USD100 million in investment from many institutional investors.. At the company's anniversary in November, Geng said it was valued at USD1 billion and was mulling a Nasdaq listing, according to a statement making the rounds on social media.

The app will report to regulators, departments of health and disease control, and follow the regulatory standards by communicating, exchanging information and following the suggestions of the regulators, Blued noted in the statement.