"Grindr User Data Was Sold Through Ad Networks", 2 May 2022

The precise movements of millions of users of the... dating app Grindr were collected from a digital advertising network and made available for sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

The information was available for sale since at least 2017, and historical data may still be obtainable...

The data didn’t contain personal information such as names or phone numbers. But the Grindr data were in some cases detailed enough to infer things like romantic encounters between specific users based on their device’s proximity to one another, as well as identify clues to people’s identities such as their workplaces and home addresses based on their patterns, habits and routines...

... Patrick Lenihan, a spokesman for Grindr... 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.”

Clients of mobile-advertising company UM have been able to purchase the bulk phone-movement data that included many Grindr users since at least 2017 and possibly earlier...

UM... was able to access Grindr data from the advertising network MoPub... Twitter Inc. owned MoPub at the time... AppLovin MoPub’s new owner, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Through a spokeswoman, Twitter said: “UberMedia was a MoPub partner. Like all partners they were subject to MoPub’s marketplace agreement and data use restrictions.” Twitter said its policies contained restrictions on the resale of data but declined to specify them.

“Every single entity in the advertising ecosystem has access to the information shared by Grindr... That means thousands of entities have such access,” said a spokesman for UM’s new owner Near.

A spokesman for the company said UberMedia’s contracts at the time prohibited using the data for surveillance, tracking or law-enforcement activity.