U.K. Grindr Users Are Suing the Company For Allegedly Sharing HIV Status With Advertisers
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Grindr users are suing the app for allegedly sharing the private information, including HIV status, of hundreds of U.K. users with third parties.
Law firm Austen Hays filed a class action lawsuit against the app in the High Court of Justice in London on Monday, according to a press release from the firm. The complaint alleges that Grindr is in breach of the U.K.’s data protection laws for sharing user data with third parties for commercial purposes from 2018 to 2020. Those third parties include advertising companies Localytics and Apptimize, which “would allow a potentially unlimited number of third parties to target and/or customize advertisements to its users,” per Austen Hays. The lawsuit also claims that those companies may have even passed user data on to fourth parties. In addition to HIV status, the lawsuit alleges that Grindr may have also shared users’ ethnicity and sexual orientation information. Thousands of U.K. Grindr users have potentially been impacted, with over 670 people signing onto the lawsuit.
According to Chaya Hanoomanjee, Austen Hays’ managing director, the firm’s clients “have experienced significant distress,” and “many have suffered feelings of fear, embarrassment and anxiety as a result.”
“Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it serves to compensate those whose data has been compromised and have suffered distress as a result, and to ensure all its users are safe while using the app, wherever they are, without fear that their data might be shared with third parties,” Hanoomanjee added in the press release.
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Grindr denied the allegations in a statement to Forbes and other media outlets. The company’s chief privacy officer, Kelly Peterson Miranda, told Forbes that Grindr has "never shared user-reported health information for 'commercial purposes' and has never monetized such information.”
“We intend to respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago,” Miranda said in the statement.
This is far from the first time that Grindr has faced scrutiny for privacy issues. A 2021 Norwegian study found that the app was sharing user information with advertising and marketing companies, including users’ precise locations. Grindr was subsequently fined $7 million in Norway for illegally disclosing user data. Last year, an ex-Grindr executive alleged that he was fired in retaliation for raising concerns about the company’s “alarming” data privacy practices, according to a lawsuit filed in a California state court.
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