Grindr’s Years of Lies About Privacy Concerns May Torpedo IPO Dreams
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Grindr which has lied about selling user’s location data for years and also obfuscated about privacy safety concerns is finding these issues being raised following its announcement about going public last month.
Grindr’s looking for more than just a hookup with Wall Street. Finding a stable relationship may be tough.
The location-based dating app favored by gay men was a pioneer, predating Tinder by three years. It’s bounced from owner to owner after founder Joel Simkhai sold it in 2018 for $245 million. A SPAC merger could be the answer, but businesses serving the LGBTQ+ community have had trouble courting investors. And Grindr has its own unique set of challenges.
Introduced in 2009, Grindr pioneered the use of then-new iPhone location features to show nearby users ready to chat or, well, go further. Its distinctive notification sound became a way LGBTQ+ people could stealthily reveal themselves to each other — or prank their friends. Grindr got blamed for killing gay bars — a charge Simkhai disputed — and coarsening LGBTQ+ dating culture. Despite those critiques and the emergence of challengers, Grindr still has a commanding position in gay dating apps.
Grindr has admitted to selling their user’s data, however, they are specifically selling the location of their users without regard for liability concerns. Grindr, a gay hook-up app, is an app where a marginalized community is revealing their location to find a person to connect to. Sure, Grindr claims they have been doing this less and less since 2020, but the issue still remains: they have been selling the location of people who are in a marginalized community – a community that has faced a huge amount of oppression in the past and is still facing it to this day.
Who in their right mind thought this was okay? Grindr initially did so to create “real-time ad exchanges” for their users, to find places super close to their location. Which makes sense, sort of. The root of the issue is that the LGBTQAI+ community is a community at risk. How does Grindr know if all of their users are out? Do they know exactly who they’re selling this information to? How do they know that those who bought the information are going to use it properly?
They don’t have any way of knowing this and they put all of their users at risk by selling their location data. And the data is still commercially available! Historical data could still be obtained and the information was able to be purchased in 2017. Even if somebody stopped using Grindr in, say, 2019, the fact they used Grindr is still out there. And yeah, the data that’s been released has anonymized, Grindr claims, but it’s really easy to reverse that and pin a specific person to a specific location and time.
This is such a huge violation of privacy and it puts people in real, actual danger. It would be so easy for bigots to get that information and use it for something other than ads. It would be so easy for people to out others who aren’t ready to come out. It’s ridiculous and, yeah, Grindr claims they’re doing it less, but the knowledge of what they have done is still out there. There’s still that question of “what if they do it again” and, with how the world is right now, it’s really messed up and problematic.
If somebody is attacked because of the data that Grindr sold, is Grindr complicit in that hate crime, legally or otherwise?
So, moral of the story?
Yeah, selling data can get you a quick buck, but don’t do it.
You have no idea who you’re putting at risk by selling that data and, if people find out you’ve done it, chances are your customers (and employees) will lose trust in you and could potentially leave you to find something else. Don’t risk it!
Earlier this month the company told The Wall Street Journal that it ceased sharing data with advertisers beginning two years ago by cutting off the flow of any location information.
The data, which was purchased by clients of a mobile advertising company, allowed unknown third parties to know sensitive information about users, including whom they were dating, where they lived and worked, and where they spent their free time.
The Journal reported that the data did not include details such as names or phone numbers.
“Since early 2020, Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors, restricting the information we share to IP address, advertising ID, and the basic information necessary to support ad delivery,” a Grindr spokesperson said.
“Grindr does not share users’ precise location, we do not share user profile information, and we do not share even industry standard data like age or gender.”
Last year, a senior Catholic priest resigned after he was outed as a user of Grindr thanks to information which was circulated in ad networks.
Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who was the top administrator for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, quit after a Catholic news site published a story detailing how he used Grindr and frequented gay bars.
“According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar, a mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 — at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities,” the Pillar reported. “Data app signals suggest he was at the same time engaged in serial and illicit sexual activity.”
The Wisconsin-based priest’s alleged “activity” included attending a “gay bathhouse” in Las Vegas.
Before 2020, Grindr shared location-based data with ad networks who would tailor targeted ads that promoted “hyperlocal” businesses like restaurants, bars, or hotels. Grindr executives at the time did not believe that the data-sharing would pose any risk to user privacy, according to the Journal.
App users often allow their locations to be detected in order to better match with potential dates who live nearby. That data is then shared with an ad network where several advertisers bid to post an ad to users’ phones once they open the app.
There could be hundreds or even thousands of advertisers in the ad network that gain access to real-time information about a user’s precise whereabouts. UM, a mobile-advertising company formerly known as UberMedia, purchased data that included the precise movements of Grindr users.
It bought the data from MoPub, an advertising network that was owned by Twitter before it was sold last year.
“UberMedia was a MoPub partner,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Journal.
“Like all partners they were subject to MoPub’s marketplace agreement and data use restrictions.”
In Jan. 2020, Twitter suspended Grindr from its ad network following a report that it shared intimate personal information about its users with third-party marketers.
