Grindr Forced to Sue Owner of Data Leaking Software

The creator of F***r [censor by GDI], a piece of software that leaked the private information and exact location of Grindr users, has contested the dating app’s copyright claim.

Earlier this month, Queer Europe published a report that highlighted just how intrusive and dangerous the tool is. Grindr then complained using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which resulted in F***r being taken down.

The owner of F***r, known as ‘tomlandia’, has filed a DMCA counter-notice. This means that Grindr will now have to sue in order to have it permanently deleted.

‘tomlandia’ is arguing that the copyright claim is incorrect. According to TorrentFreak they claimed: “F***r does not bypass any technical access control mechanism and does not access any work copyrighted by Grindr LLC.

“I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good-faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”

At least 90 clones had appeared and made the software still available on GitHub, an online computer code hosting service. Most of these have also been taken down.

Although Grindr was able to submit a DMCA with very little consequences, an unsuccessful counter-notice could result in serious legal action.

The F***r website will be kept down for the next two weeks, but unless Grindr makes a move it will be reinstated at the end of that period. However, it’s unlikely that the company won’t react given current privacy concerns.

Read more here.