grindr is paying 26 million pounds over the hiv status it handed to advertisers

via Washington Blade, PinkNews and The Hacker News.

In April 2018 a Norwegian non-profit research group called SINTEF pulled apart what Grindr was sending out of your phone, and found, sitting in the stream alongside the usual advertising sludge, two fields.

HIV status. Date last tested.

They were going to two analytics companies, Apptimize and Localytics. Not leaked. Not hacked. Shipped, so somebody could optimise a screen.

the 26 million pound settlement

Grindr has now agreed to pay 26 million pounds, about 35 million dollars, to end the British lawsuit that came out of it.

The claim was filed at the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024 by the firm Austen Hays, for thousands of UK users, a figure reported between 10,000 and 12,000 depending on who is counting. PinkNews puts the average at £2,167 a head if it is divided evenly. Grindr disclosed the deal in a filing on September 2 and pays in two halves: 13 million pounds by December 31 this year, 13 million more by March 31 next.

The company's line: "The settlement includes no findings or admission of liability. 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."

what grindr's statement leaves out

Some of its UK users. That pre-2020 period. Translated: different management, ancient history, everybody move along.

The different management part is at least partly true, and worth being fair about. The conduct sits in the years when the app was owned by Kunlun, the Chinese gaming company that sold it to San Vicente Acquisition in 2020, largely because Washington decided a Chinese firm holding the intimate data of millions of American men was a national security problem. It was. It was also, and this is the bit nobody in that particular argument seemed to care about, a problem for the men.

Norway's own data protection authority had already fined Grindr over the same practices in January 2021, a penalty later reduced. So this is the second body to land on it, and the company still has not said it did anything wrong.

why hiv status is not a preference

Here is why it is not a filing technicality. HIV status is not a preference toggle. For plenty of men it is the single fact that decides whether they keep a job, hold a visa, tell their mother, or in some countries stay out of a police cell. Grindr asked for it inside a product sold on the promise that it was a safer place to be honest than the street outside, and then let it ride in a data packet to a vendor nobody had ever heard of.

£2,167 is real money and it is not the point. The point is that the app always knew exactly what it was holding.