Here’s why hundreds of Grindr users in the UK are suing the app

Legal action has commenced against Grindr in the UK. Just over 650 users lodged a claim yesterday with the country’s High Court in London. 

The claim alleges the dating and hookup app shared personal data with third parties. It says this included sensitive information such as HIV status and the date people last took an HIV test. It alleges this information was then sold to third parties for commercial benefit. Lawyers say this was in breach of British data protection laws. 

Grindr told The Guardian it planned to “respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterisation of practices from more than four years ago”.

Law firm Austen Hays says beyond the 650 involved with the claim, “thousands” of UK users were affected. Others may join the legal action. The law firm hopes to win claimants up to £100,000 ($124,000) in damages. 

Lawyer Chaya Hanoomanjee from Austen Hays, who is leading the claim, told the BBC the claimants “experienced significant distress over their highly sensitive and private information being shared without their consent.

“Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it serves to compensate those whose data has been compromised,” she said.

Besides HIV information, the claim alleges data relating to ethnicity and sexual orientation was also shared. It points to alleged practices at Grindr before April 2020, before Grindr changed its consent mechanisms.

Grindr has previously admitted to sharing data with two third-party companies. These companies monitored the way people used the app. Grindr denies selling the data to advertisers. It also says it stopped sharing HIV data in 2018 when news first emerged of the practice. 

Grindr previously sued in Norway

This is not the first time Grindr has faced legal action over data protection breaches. It was successfully sued in Norway in 2021. On that occasion, it was fined $6.8 million for breaking GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) rules. 

In 2022, Grindr faced reprimand from the UK’s data protection watchdog for not doing enough to warn users about how their data might be used. 

“The ICO [The Information Commissioner’s Office] deemed that Grindr has failed to provide effective and transparent privacy information to its UK data subjects in relation to the processing of their personal data.”