LGBTQ dating app Grindr faces UK lawsuit over alleged data protection breaches
- Users’ sensitive personal information, including HIV status, allegedly shared with third parties without consent, law firm says
- Grindr says will ‘respond vigorously’ to claim, has never shared user-reported health information for commercial purposes
Gay dating app Grindr is facing a mass data protection lawsuit in London from hundreds of users who allegedly had their private information, including HIV status, shared with third parties without consent, a law firm said on Monday.
Austen Hays, which said the lawsuit is being filed at London’s High Court, said thousands of Grindr users in the United Kingdom may have been affected.
The firm alleges users’ highly sensitive information, including HIV status and the date of their latest HIV test, were provided to third parties for commercial purposes.
A spokesperson for Grindr initially said in a statement that it planned to “respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterisation of practices from more than four years ago”.
The spokesperson later said in an updated statement: “Grindr has never shared user-reported health information for ‘commercial purposes’ and has never monetised such information”.
Austen Hays said around 670 people had signed up to the lawsuit over breaches said to have taken place between 2018 and 2020, with potentially thousands more joining the case.