Grindr Faces UK Lawsuit over Data Sharing Breaches
A claim has been made in the UK High Court alleging that dating app Grindr illegally shared user’s sensitive information, including HIV status, with advertisers. Grindr has said that the claim is a mischaracterisation and that it will respond in due course.
The case has been put forward by more than 650 claimants, who claim to represent thousands of UK Grindr users who were affected by illegal data sharing and “covert tracking technology” deployed by the dating app.
Chaya Hanoomanjee, the lawyer leading the claim, told the BBC that the claimants “experienced significant distress over their highly sensitive and private information being shared without their consent”.
The lawsuit alleges that Grindr shared sensitive data, including information about ethnicity, sexual orientation, and HIV status, with third parties. These breaches of UK data privacy laws were said to have taken place in 2018 and 2020.
The dating app has responded to say it will “respond vigorously” to the claim, the BBC writes. A spokesperson for Grindr reiterated the platform’s privacy efforts and said that the lawsuit was “based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago”.
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office previously reprimanded Grindr in 2022 for failing to provide effective and transparent privacy information to UK users. In 2020, Grindr was fined €5.8 million after the Norwegian Consumer Council found that the dating app shared sensitive data with third parties for surveillance-based advertising.
