Grindr stops sharing HIV status of users with third parties after privacy fallout
As data privacy concerns sparked by Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal rock the tech industry, gay hookup app Grindr announced Monday that it will stop sharing its users’ HIV status with third parties.
Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users, provided its users’ HIV status to two third-party apps, along with other information users chose to display on their profiles, BuzzFeed News reported Monday. The company told BuzzFeed News it does not sell any information to third-party apps.
Shortly after the publication of the report, Grindr told the news outlet Axios that it will stop sharing its users’ HIV status with Apptimize and Localytics, which help optimize its app. Grindr’s head of security, Bryce Case, also said Grindr’s situation is wholly different than the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica case, in which the latter obtained information of 50 million U.S. Facebook users without their knowledge and used it for political campaigns.
“I understand the news cycle right now is very focused on these issues,” Case told Axios. “I think what’s happened to Grindr is, unfairly, we’ve been singled out.”
Localytics’ vice president of product, Bryan Dunn, said in a statement that the company only collects publicly available data and that it does not automatically collect user data without consent. Dunn also said the data is not sold and is stored in industry-standard security management systems.
“It is up to each customer to determine what information they send to Localytics, and Localytics processes that data solely for the customer’s use,” said Dunn. “We do not share, or disclose, our customer’s data.”
Grindr sent user information such as GPS data, phone ID and email along with the person’s HIV status to third-party apps, making it possible to identify users and their HIV status together, according to Antoine Pultier, a researcher at the Norwegian nonprofit SINTEF, who originally discovered the information-sharing.
SINTEF also discovered Grindr was sharing its users’ exact GPS position, sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, and “tribe” — a slang term for gay subculture — to other third-party advertising companies in easily hackable plain text.
While Grindr said it would stop sending users’ HIV status to third parties, Grindr Chief Technology Officer Scott Chen said in a public statement that users have a choice to share their HIV status on their profiles and that they “make it clear in our privacy policy that if you choose to include this information in your profile, the information will also become public.”
“It’s important to remember that Grindr is a public forum,” said Chen in the statement.
The West Hollywoodbased company also said it consulted with several international health organizations before deciding to include the option of users adding their HIV status.
Politicians in the Bay Area and beyond expressed concerns over the new Grindr revelation.
Senator Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, tweeted his concerns about Grindr’s commitment to data privacy shortly after the BuzzFeed report was published.
“Privacy isn’t just about credit card numbers and passwords,” tweeted Markey. “Sharing sensitive information like this can put LGBT Americans at risk.”
San Francisco Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, a longtime LGBT advocate and the first HIV-positive supervisor in the city’s history, told ABC-7 News that he found Grindr’s information sharing “very disturbing and possibly sinister.”
“As someone who is HIV positive, I do value their contributions toward destigmatizing HIV, but this collection of information is a step too far,” said Sheehy.