Grindr pays £26 million to settle HIV privacy action
US dating app Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to UK-based claimants who alleged it had shared users’ HIV status and other sensitive personal information with advertisers.
US dating app Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to UK-based claimants who alleged it had shared users’ HIV status and other sensitive personal information with advertisers.
Last week, Grindr Inc told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a regulatory filing that it would pay the 12,000 claimants in two tranches by next March.
The group filed a claim in the High Court two years ago. Their allegations related to the periods before April 2018 and between May 2028 and April 2020, when Grindr changed its consent models.
The claimants alleged that the app – which is the largest LGBTQ+ dating app – shared users’ personal information with a potentially unlimited number of third parties, including advertising companies. In some cases, that information included their HIV status. It also included the ethnicity and sexual orientation of users.
Grindr says in the filing that the action related to “historical data practices before 2020, when Grindr was owned and controlled by the Chinese conglomerate Kunlun”.
“While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period.”
Kunlun bought a 60% stake in the company in 2016, fully acquiring it in 2018. But one year later, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States informed the Chinese gaming company that its ownership of Grindr constituted a national security risk. It sold the app to US-based San Vicente Acquisition, and Grindr went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2022.