Grindr to Host First HIV Data Privacy Summit

Grindr has announced it will be hosting HIV/AIDS policy experts at a brand new summit in Los Angeles. The summit will take place in late October.

A number of LGBTQ+ community leaders have been invited to provide feedback on the recent changes made to Grindr’s privacy policies. From this feedback, a set of industry-wide principles will be created to ensure privacy and protection for everyone who chooses to disclose their sexual health status online.

Several high profile HIV/AIDS organizations will be participating, including AIDS United, National Minority AIDS Council, San Francisco AIDS Foundation and more. Grindr is also pursuing other leading groups in the area to increase participation.

Jack Harrison-Quintana is the vice president of social impact and executive director of Grindr for Equality, the brand’s programme to promote justice, health and safety. He told PRNewswire: “The LGBTQ+ community continues to see the incredible positive outcomes that occur when people are able to share their HIV status.

“By inviting feedback on our own policy changes and initiating a larger dialogue on privacy needs for self-disclosed sexual health information, we can help ensure users have a safe and secure platform to openly share their status and have conversations online, which we know leads to higher testing rates and further reduces the stigma still attached to HIV status.”

Grindr first let its users post their HIV statuses in 2016, but since then they received criticism for sharing that data with third party firms.

As a result, Grindr has worked to help increase awareness of HIV/AIDS. They vowed to stop sharing data and now offer test reminders and test locators to members.

Read more here.