Add Grindr to the list of companies with creepy data-sharing practices.
The gay dating network is revealing information about its users’ HIV status with third-party companies.
A data analysis conducted by an outside research firm, and independently verified by BuzzFeed News, shows that a popular gay dating app is sharing its users’ HIV status with third-party companies.
According to the report which was done by Azeen Ghorayshi and Sri Ray, Grindr furnished two companies, Apptimize and Localytics, with data on users’ HIV status and the last date they were tested for the virus.
Because the HIV information is sent together with users’ GPS data, phone ID, and email, it could identify specific users and their HIV status, according to Antoine Pultier, a researcher at the Norwegian nonprofit SINTEF, which first identified the issue.
“The HIV status is linked to all the other information. That’s the main issue,” Pultier told BuzzFeed News. “I think this is the incompetence of some developers that just send everything, including HIV status.”
The analysis calls into question how seriously the company takes its users’ privacy.
“Grindr is a relatively unique place for openness about HIV status,” James Krellenstein, a member of AIDS Advocacy Group ACT UP New York, said.
“To then have that data shared with third parties that you weren’t explicitly notified about, and having that possibly threaten your health or safety — that is an extremely, extremely egregious breach of basic standards that we wouldn’t expect from a company that likes to brand itself as a supporter of the queer community.”
Health experts say this could add to the stigma around HIV. “Sharing users’ HIV status would be a serious violation of privacy,” Lina Rosengren-Hovee, an infectious diseases fellow at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who has studied the use of Grindr to advertise self-test HIV kits, told Vox. “Discrimination and stigmatization based on HIV status is a very real issue for those who are HIV-positive, and this breach of confidentially can only worsen this problem.”
Sharing STD information is dangerous not just for the people who risk having their personal data exposed.
“There’s also a concern that if users of these apps begin to question whether it is safe to share information about their HIV status, they may be less likely to reveal it, which could potentially create more opportunities for STIs to spread,” sex researcher Justin Lehmiller added.
Could the use of dating apps be linked to an increased risk of STDs?
‘We've been singled out'
Grinder defended itself today stating that the data was shared in line with standard industry practices and that it felt the app had been unfairly singled out.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it was investigating.
In a statement, it said it was working to “establish the scale of any impact on UK users”.
Grindr’s security boss Bryce Case later told US news site Axios that data sharing with third-party companies with the goal of improving the app, rather than selling data, was commonplace.
The companies that did get the data – Apptimize and Localytics – are paid to monitor how users interact with the software to see what could be improved.
It added: “Grindr has never, nor will we ever sell personally identifiable user information – especially information regarding HIV status or last test date – to third parties or advertisers.”
Update on 4/3/18 at 8:22 pm CST: Washington Post reports Grindr will stop sharing HIV data with third parties
