That information is aimed at informing potential sexual partners, the company says. It also allows users to list their latest HIV test date. Grindr allows its users to choose from a number of options under “HIV Status,” including listing positive, negative or receiving treatment. “However, this information is always transmitted securely with encryption, and there are data retention policies in place to further protect our users’ privacy from disclosure.” “Sometimes this data may include location data or data from HIV status fields as these are features within Grindr,” Chen said. “Our goal is and always has been to support the health and safety of our users worldwide.”Ĭhen said Grindr, which has more than 3 million users, only shares personal information when necessary or appropriate. “As a company that serves the LGBTQ community, we understand the sensitivities around HIV status disclosure,” said Scott Chen, Grindr’s chief technology officer. In a separate statement on Monday, Grindr said it would never sell personally identifiable information to third parties, including advertisers.Īpptimize and Localytics - services that help Grindr test features on its platform - are under contract to safeguard user privacy and security, the company said.
The policy change was first reported by Axios.
In response to an outcry on Monday, Grindr will stop sharing users’ HIV status to outside vendors, according to someone close to the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Grindr’s vendors, Apptimize and Localytics, are fed user data that includes HIV statuses, GPS data, phone numbers and e-mail addresses that, when combined, could expose someone’s private health information, researchers told BuzzFeed. The report comes at a time of heightened anxiety about digital privacy because of the data misappropriation scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that received unauthorized data from millions of Facebook users through an outside app developer. The West Hollywood company’s policy change came after a BuzzFeed report on Monday that said personal data was being passed to two outside vendors hired by Grindr to test the performance of its app. The platform violated European Union privacy regulations by sharing the GPS data, age and gender of its users with third-party companies to help target advertisements, according to a report by a Norwegian consumer rights group.Grindr, a gay dating app, will stop sharing users’ HIV statuses with third parties after a report disclosed that the company passed the information on to two vendors.
Grindr has faced other accusations of improperly managing the data under Beijing Kunlun's ownership. The deal is awaiting approval from a US committee authorised to review transactions involving foreign investments, the filing said. It will sell a 98.59 percent stake in Grindr to San Vicente Acquisition, a holding company based in the US state of Delaware, according to a company filing with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Friday. National security officials in Washington fear the platform-which bills itself as the world's largest social networking space for LGBT people-could be used by the Chinese government to blackmail Americans with government security clearances, according to media reports last year.īeijing Kunlun Tech took a majority stake in the app in 2016 and bought the remaining equity two years later for a combined $245 million, but was reportedly ordered to relinquish the platform by US officials last year.