Dating App Grindr Sued for Disclosing Sensitive Information, HIV Status of Users

Dating application Grindr is reportedly being sued in the United Kingdom for sharing sensitive personal data, including health information such as the HIV status of users, without their consent. The complaint is being brought at the High Court of London, according to Austen Hays, who also stated that thousands of Grindr users in the UK might have been impacted.

According to the firm, extremely private information about users, such as their date of most recent HIV test and HIV status, was given to outside parties for profit. Grindr first stated that it intended to fiercely refute this claim, which seems predicated on a misrepresentation of actions from almost four years ago.

Later, the spokesman revised his statement to clarify that Grindr has never monetized user-reported health information or shared it for "commercial purposes." The allegation is that the business violated UK data privacy rules by disclosing private information to outside parties for profit. It claims to have contained data on users' sexual orientation and ethnicity.

Although the data was also shared between May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020, the allegation primarily states that it happened before April 3, 2018. It lists Apptimize and Localytics, two data analytics organizations, as third parties with access to private information.

HIV Data for Sale

On the other hand, it reportedly claims that an infinite number of outside parties customized the data to show Grindr users relevant ads. Furthermore, it asserts that businesses might have kept some of the shared data for internal use.

In 2018, it was revealed that Grindr had been giving Apptimize and Localytics access to user data, including their HIV status. These businesses received payment to observe user behavior on the app and make improvements.

Grindr justified the practice at the time, claiming that it followed industry norms. However, it later stopped exchanging HIV data with those businesses. According to the company, it has never sold any data to advertisers.

Cases Against Dating Applications

Grindr is not the first dating application sued over alleged private data collection. Back in 2022, in a complaint filed by Tinder users, Match Group Inc. was claimed to be violating an Illinois state privacy law by gathering personal information about users' faces from pictures taken with dating apps.

The Federal Trade Commission then investigated Match, which owns the dating applications OkCupid and Tinder, for possible data misuse. The FTC also investigated whether OkCupid improperly shared photos with a facial recognition business.

Match was also recently claimed to be purposely creating addictive dating applications. The California class action lawsuit alleges the corporation has locked users "into a perpetual pay-to-play loop" and failed to assist them in finding relationships, all in the name of increasing profits.

The plaintiffs claim that Match Group has created "addicts" out of users by luring them in with monthly fees that promise more matches and even a relationship.