WEBDESK - NAYADAUR
Dating app Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million ($35 million) to settle a lawsuit brought by thousands of users in the United Kingdom who alleged the company shared highly sensitive personal information with advertising companies, including HIV status in some cases.
The settlement ends a two-year legal dispute after London law firm Austen Hays filed a group action in the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024 on behalf of Grindr users.
The firm represented about 12,000 people in the case. If the £26 million settlement were divided equally, each claimant would receive an average of about £2,167.
The allegations concerned data practices dating back to early 2020 and focused on whether Grindr unlawfully disclosed private information to third-party companies for advertising purposes.
Grindr, which is headquartered in West Hollywood, California, said in a US regulatory filing that it had resolved the UK group action concerning what it described as "historical data practices before 2020."
The company did not admit liability as part of the settlement.
"While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period," the company said.
Under the agreement, Grindr will pay £13 million by the end of 2026 and a further £13 million by the end of March 2027.
The lawsuit follows years of scrutiny over Grindr's handling of sensitive user information. The app, founded in 2009 to help gay men connect, now describes itself as the world's largest dating platform for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, with nearly 15 million users globally.
In April 2018, Grindr said it would stop sharing users' HIV status with third-party companies after Norwegian researchers reported that information was being shared with two companies.
The company's historical data practices have also drawn regulatory action outside Britain.
In 2021, Norway's data protection authority fined Grindr 65 million Norwegian kroner, then worth about £4.8 million, for violating data protection rules. Grindr appealed the decision, but Norway's Court of Appeal upheld the fine last year.
The court concluded that Grindr's handling of personal information for advertising purposes made the company's claim that it did not sell users' personal information to third parties for advertising "clearly misleading."
The UK settlement relates to alleged conduct before 2020, when Grindr was owned and controlled by Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech.
Grindr was later sold to the investment group San Vicente Acquisition in a $608 million deal after a US government national security panel raised concerns about the potential for Chinese authorities to access American users' personal data.
The company subsequently went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2022 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a transaction that valued Grindr at about $2.1 billion.
Grindr is now valued at roughly $2.65 billion.
The company said it had significantly overhauled its privacy program since 2020, focusing on the specific privacy requirements of its user community.
"Grindr is and remains a safe space for users, committed to transparency, user control and responsible data practices," the company said.
Austen Hays' parent company, Gateley, said the firm was grateful to the claimants for trusting it with what it described as a particularly sensitive case.
The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by Grindr, but the size of the payment highlights the growing legal and financial risks facing technology companies over the handling of sensitive personal data.
For Grindr users, the case also underscores the broader question of how dating platforms collect, process, and share information that can reveal deeply private aspects of people's lives.