Millions of Grindr users had their location data collected from the gay-dating app and sold for years, people familiar with the matter said
The precise movements of millions of users of the gay-dating app Grindr were collected from a digital advertising network and made available for sale, according to people familiar with the matter.
National-security officials have also indicated concern about the issue: The Grindr data were used as part of a demonstration for various U.S. government agencies about the intelligence risks from commercially available information, according to a person who was involved in the presentation. “Since early 2020, Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors,” said Patrick Lenihan, a spokesman for Grindr. He said the company pays a price for reducing the data shared, including lesser ad quality for users and lower revenue. Mr. Lenihan added: “The activities that have been described would not be possible with Grindr’s current privacy practices, which we’ve had in place for two years.
The idea was that through what are known as real-time ad exchanges, users would be served targeted messages about the nearest restaurants, bars or hotels. Most apps participate in real-time ad exchanges that expose their details to hundreds or thousands of unknown parties. However, Grindr and other apps that are built to encourage users to share their location generate particularly specific data sets that can be used to reconstruct data about individual users.
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