A lawsuit filed in London’s High Court alleges that gay dating app Grindr shared users’ personal information, including HIV status and date of most recent HIV test, The Guardian reports. According to the lawsuit filed by the firm Austen Hays, Grindr shared the private data with two advertising companies without users’ consent.

 

About 670 people in the United Kingdom signed on to the data protection lawsuit, but thousands more may join the case. The alleged breaches of personal data took place between April 2018 and April 2020.

 

In a statement published in Reuters, a Grindr spokesperson said, “Grindr has never shared user-reported health information for ‘commercial purposes’ and has never monetized such information.”

 

“We are committed to protecting our users’ data and complying with all applicable data privacy regulations, including in the U.K.,” a Grindr spokesperson told The Guardian. “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 mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.”

 

Austen Hays managing director Chaya Hanoomanjee is leading the lawsuit. “Our clients have experienced significant distress over their highly sensitive and private information being shared without their consent, and many have suffered feelings of fear, embarrassment and anxiety as a result,” Hanoomanjee said. “Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it serves to compensate those whose data has been compromised and have suffered distress as a result, and to ensure all its users are safe while using the app, wherever they are, without fear that their data might be shared with third parties.”

 

Launched in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, Grindr describes itself as “the largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. We have millions of daily users who use our location-based technology in almost every country in every corner of the planet.”

 

In March 2023, Grindr made POZ headlines when it teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Together TakeMeHome program to deliver 1 million free home HIV tests.