"Lawsuit in London to allege Grindr shared users’ HIV status with ad firms", 22 Apr 2024

...Grindr faces the prospect of legal action by hundreds of users who will allege that the dating app shared highly sensitive personal information, including in some cases their HIV status, with advertising companies.

The law firm Austen Hays is to file a claim... in London’s high court alleging that the US owner of the app breached British data protection laws.

The firm alleges that thousands of UK Grindr users had their information misused. So far 670 people have signed up to the claim, and the firm said “thousands” more people had expressed interest in joining.

Grindr said it would respond vigorously to the claim, which it said relied on a mischaracterisation of past policies...

The high court claim against Grindr will focus on the company’s alleged sharing of personal information with two advertising companies. It will further allege that those companies may have sold on the data to other businesses...

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 claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterisation of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.”