Anúncios
On the basis that it allegedly shared personal information with third parties, including the HIV status of its users, a lawsuit has been filed against Grindr, which is the most popular dating app for the LGBT community in the world.
The case was filed against Grindr.
Anúncios
For the purpose of this lawsuit, which was filed with the High Court in London, it is said that “covert tracking technology” was used, and that very sensitive information was illegally supplied to advertising.
According to the legal firm Austen Hays, more than 650 individuals have submitted claims, and “thousands” of people in the United Kingdom have been affected by the incident.
Anúncios
Additionally, Grindr has said that it would “respond vigorously” to the situation that has been brought up.
The allegation “appears to be based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago,” according to a representative for Grindr, who said that the company takes privacy “extremely seriously.” The behavior in question dates back more than four years.
According to Austen Hays, if the lawsuit is deemed to be successful, the parties involved in the litigation have the opportunity to earn damages that may amount to thousands of pounds.
In accordance with the claim form that was submitted to the High Court, the law company wants to file a claim that is more than one hundred thousand pounds in total.
Chaya Hanoomanjee, an attorney associated with Austen Hays, is one of the lawyers who is leading the charge in the case. She said that the individuals making the claims “experienced significant distress over their highly sensitive and private information being shared without their consent.”
“Those whose data has been compromised are entitled to compensation from Grindr,” according to her statement. “Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community that it serves.”
According to a survey that was conducted by Ofcom and released in May of 2023, there are around 924,000 users in the United Kingdom who make use of the dating app. There are thirteen million users that utilize the application on a monthly basis.
Additionally, it had the highest engagement rate of any dating app, with users checking in for an average of six hours and 49 minutes during that specific month. This was the highest engagement rate of any dating app.
Sensitive information that is being shared
When the firm exposed sensitive information to third parties for the purpose of doing business, it is claimed that it committed a breach of the data privacy rules that are in place in the United Kingdom.
Users’ socioeconomic position and sexual orientation were reportedly included in the data that was collected, according to the report.
However, the claim argues that the bulk of the incidents took place prior to April 3, 2018, despite the fact that the data was also provided between the 25th of May and the 7th of April 2020.
Two companies that are experts in data analytics, namely Apptimize and Localytics, have been identified as third parties that were able to get access to the sensitive information.
On the other hand, it is said that the data was employed by an excessively large number of third parties in order to customize advertisements that were given to users of Grindr.
Additionally, it has been suggested that some of the data that was provided by companies may have been retained by those firms for their own purposes after it was first shared.
2018 was the year that disclosed to the general public that Grindr had been sharing personal information with Apptimize and Localytics, including the HIV status of its users. This information included the users’ HIV status.
These companies were paid to monitor how users interacted with the program in order to improve it. The motivation behind this was to improve the application.
Grindr defended the practice at the time, noting that it was in conformity with industry regulations. However, the company subsequently said that it had stopped sharing HIV data with some of the companies that were participating in the practice.
According to the firm, it has never before sold the data to any advertising company in the past
A fine of £5.5 million was handed down to the firm by the Norwegian authorities in 2021 as a consequence for the corporation’s violation of the criteria of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union.
Following an examination, it was found that it had shared user data with third-party companies for the purpose of advertising without first getting the users’ explicit agreement. This was one of the things that was uncovered.
In the year 2022, the data authorities of the United Kingdom issued a reprimand to Grindr for the data protection procedures that the firm had put into place.
Following an examination, the Information Commissioner’s Office came to the judgment that the company had failed to “provide effective and transparent privacy information to its UK data subjects in relation to the processing of their personal data.” This result was reached after the inquiry was carried out.
