Gay dating app Grindr sold private data of thousands of users for years

Grindr, a gay, homosexual dating app, has a major privacy problem, according to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

For years, users’ location data from the app has been for sale.

Since 2017, the data has been available for about 5 years. The report suggests that previous data may still be available. But the company claims to have stopped providing location data to ad networks. Grindr turned off the flow of location data to any ad networks two years ago, thereby ending the potential of such data collecting today, according to the business.

Invasion of privacy

 “The precise movements of millions of users of the gay dating app Grindr were collected from a digital advertising network and made available for sale,” the Journal reported. Thereby, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The data is likely to be devoid of personally identifiable information such as names and phone numbers. However, users can infer things like individual users and romantic encounters based on their closeness to a specific location using GPS data. The location data of a user can potentially reveal information about their identities, such as their work and home addresses.

A Norwegian consumer group stated in 2020 that apps like Grindr and OkCupid disclose personal data like user location and sexuality with about 100 firms. These companies use the information for advertising and marketing.

Many people are still secretive about their sexual orientation. Being gay is still unsettling in some places, so this invasion of privacy can be extremely dangerous. Experts have voiced concerns about the sharing of such information, with some describing it as dangerous in extreme cases.

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