Grindr has been accused of sharing user information, a practice which the company says has been ‘mischaracterized’ (Picture: Getty Images)
In 2014, Chris* did what millions had already done before him: he downloaded Grindr and became part of an online community overflowing with tiled torsos and greyed-out silhouettes.
Some 10 years later, however, Chris is one of 1,500 people taking legal action against the world’s biggest dating app for LGBTQ+ people.
A claim lodged at London’s High Court earlier this year accused Grindr of sharing the intimate information of its users with third parties for profit.
For Chris, this included his name, age, location, physical description and medical information such as his HIV status.
‘How could you treat your users like this?’ asks Chris, who is speaking to Metro.co.uk under a pseudonym as an anonymity order has forbidden claimants from sharing their real names.
‘I trusted this app, it had a huge effect on the gay community and now it feels as though Grindr has betrayed that trust,’ he adds.
In response, Grindr, which is being advised by law firm Cooley, has denied selling user HIV data. A spokesperson said it was ‘inaccurate’ to say the app shared this information ‘for advertising purposes’.
Grindr is the most popular dating app for LGBTQ+ people (Picture: Photothek)
The Los Angeles-based company has 13 million monthly users – about 924,000 are in the UK – and uses GPS to pinpoint people’s locations within a 100m radius.
Profile fields include age, height, ethnicity and current HIV status, while users even get reminders to get an STI test and the app offers free ads for HIV-testing services.
‘Grindr is a hugely important place for the gay community,’ explains Chris. ‘When the app was released it transformed how dating worked.
‘You no longer had to go to gay bars and seeing who else was in your area was a completely new experience.’
However, according to the class action law firm Austen Hayes, before April 3, 2018, and between the dates of May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020, Grindr ‘shared users’ personal and sensitive data for profit with third-party advertising companies without their consent’.
Their lawsuit form, which has been shown with Metro, states: ‘The claimants allege that, without their expectation, knowledge or consent, the defendants deployed covert tracking technology within the Grindr app to collect and share various categories of personal data, including highly-sensitive personal data, with third parties.’
Users can say what their HIV status is and when their most recent test was (Picture: Grindr)
In short, Grindr has breached British data privacy laws, according to Chaya Hanoomanjee, the managing director at Austen Hayes leading the suit. And now, the claimants are seeking thousands of pounds in compensation.
‘This revelation has caused them huge distress, and Grindr needs to be held accountable for its failure to respect and protect its users’ privacy,’ she tells Metro.
According to Austen Hayes, Grindr shared sensitive user information with app analytic firms Apptimize and Localytics.
‘This would allow a potentially unlimited number of third parties to target and/or customise advertisements to its users,’ the legal firm claims, adding that Grindr could have profited from this move.
For many queer people, privacy is uniquely important. Not everyone is open about their sexuality or gender identity; for some, being out could cost them their life.
‘I’m out, but I know so many gay men who aren’t and I’m worried about them,’ Chris says.
The app has been scrutinised by data and privacy agencies in the past (Picture: Getty Images North America)
‘Many still don’t want to be open about their sexuality, and the idea that their data is now in the hands of complete strangers is extremely worrying.’
The issue first came to light in 2018 when Buzzfeed News reported that Grindr was sharing user HIV status with Apptimize and Localytics. In response to the allegation, Grindr said it did so with ‘select trusted contractors’.
‘We have removed any data regarding HIV status from both Apptimize and Localytics,’ the company added.
However, in 2020, Norway’s consumer protection agency filed a complaint against Grindr for unlawful data mining. The following year, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority fined the app 65 million Norwegian kroner (approximately £4.8million), for violating privacy rights after failing to comply with GDPR between July 20, 2018, and April 8, 2020.
The platform had a ‘take it or leave it’ approach to consent, explains noyb, the European privacy NGO that supported the complaints. It added that Grindr had disclosed the intimate details of users with 19 third-party companies.
This included MoPub, a mobile advertising platform used by X, then known as Twitter, that had the right to share information with its 170 partners.
Chris worries that the data of users in the closet was shared (Picture: Getty Images North America)
Grindr again stressed it works with third parties, such as software developers and analytical services, to improve its platform. Any HIV data provided by users and then shared with third parties is encrypted.
Ads for HIV treatments and other medications are shown to users regardless of their medical status.
Following the Norwegian case, British data regulators ‘reprimanded’ the app in 2022 for ‘failing to provide effective and transparent privacy information to its UK data subjects in relation to the processing of their personal data’.
Now, Hanoomanjee is urging Grindr users to join Austen Hayes’ claim. To be eligible, people had to have been on the free version of the app between December 2016 and April 2020
‘All clients in this claim will remain anonymous following a court order, so there should be no fear of their details becoming public or being shared with anyone else,’ explains Hanoomanjee.
‘The legal process could potentially take years, so we hope that Grindr decides to behave responsibly and acknowledges their wrongdoing to avoid protracted court proceedings.’
Grindr has said it has never sold the information of its users to advertisers (Picture: AFP)
Chris says that he signed up after seeing an advert for Austen Hayes’ claim on Facebook, and had no second thoughts about doing so.
‘The knowledge that my details were passed on to other companies, quite possibly for profit, made me immediately think about whether I could take legal action,’ he recalls.
Now Chris is unsure whether he’ll ever use – or trust – Grindr again.
‘Even though the app is vitally important, I may have to give up using it entirely,’ he says. ‘It’s played a huge role in the community and it was important to me, but reluctantly I think I will have to delete it.’
A spokesperson for Grindr told Metro.co.uk: ‘Grindr has never sold or shared user-reported health information, including HIV status, for advertising purposes, as is inaccurately suggested in this legal claim.
‘As we will demonstrate in our response, this claim is based on a fundamental mischaracterisation of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.
‘Users, in this case, appear to have been misled by this mischaracterisation, which is a matter of regret, and we remain committed to protecting our users’ data and complying with all applicable data privacy regulations.’
Apptimize and Upland have been approached for comments.
*(Not his real name).
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