Hundreds of users of the gay dating app Grindr claimed the company shared their private information, including their HIV status, with third parties, a law firm said Monday.
Austen Hays said he was taking a massive data protection action to the High Court in London and claimed thousands of Grindr users in the UK may have been affected.
The company claims that users’ highly sensitive information, including their HIV status and the date of their last HIV test, was provided to third parties for commercial purposes.
He said about 670 people had signed on to the lawsuit over violations that allegedly took place between 2018 and 2020, with potentially thousands more joining the case.
Chaya Hanoomanjee, chief executive of Austen Hays, said in a statement: “Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it serves to compensate those whose data was compromised and suffered distress as a result, and to ensure that all its users are safe while using the app. , wherever they are, without fear of their data being shared with third parties.”
A Grindr spokesperson said: “We are committed to protecting our users’ data and complying with all applicable data privacy regulations, including in the UK.
“We are proud of our global privacy program and take privacy extremely seriously.
“We intend to respond vigorously to this assertion, which appears to be based on a misinterpretation of practices from more than four years ago, before the start of 2020.”
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This is not the first time that Grindr’s data protection practices have come under scrutiny.
In 2021, it was £5.5 million fine by the Norwegian authorities regarding its processing of users’ personal data.
The country’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) found that it had broken GDPR rules by sharing data including GPS location, user profile information and even whether users are on Grindr, which could reveal their sexual orientation and would therefore deserve special protection.
Grindr was also reprimanded in 2022 by the UK’s Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) for failing to “provide effective and transparent privacy information to its data subjects in the UK in relation to processing of their personal data”.
Hundreds of users of the gay dating app Grindr claimed the company shared their private information, including their HIV status, with third parties, a law firm said Monday.
Austen Hays said he was taking a massive data protection action to the High Court in London and claimed thousands of Grindr users in the UK may have been affected.
The company claims that users’ highly sensitive information, including their HIV status and the date of their last HIV test, was provided to third parties for commercial purposes.
He said about 670 people had signed on to the lawsuit over violations that allegedly took place between 2018 and 2020, with potentially thousands more joining the case.
Chaya Hanoomanjee, chief executive of Austen Hays, said in a statement: “Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it serves to compensate those whose data was compromised and suffered distress as a result, and to ensure that all its users are safe while using the app. , wherever they are, without fear of their data being shared with third parties.”
A Grindr spokesperson said: “We are committed to protecting our users’ data and complying with all applicable data privacy regulations, including in the UK.
“We are proud of our global privacy program and take privacy extremely seriously.
“We intend to respond vigorously to this assertion, which appears to be based on a misinterpretation of practices from more than four years ago, before the start of 2020.”
Read more from Sky News:
Huw Edwards resigns from BBC
Warwick Davis apologizes for concern after social media post
This is not the first time that Grindr’s data protection practices have come under scrutiny.
In 2021, it was £5.5 million fine by the Norwegian authorities regarding its processing of users’ personal data.
The country’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) found that it had broken GDPR rules by sharing data including GPS location, user profile information and even whether users are on Grindr, which could reveal their sexual orientation and would therefore deserve special protection.
Grindr was also reprimanded in 2022 by the UK’s Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) for failing to “provide effective and transparent privacy information to its data subjects in the UK in relation to processing of their personal data”.