Grindr Sued in UK for Sharing Users' HIV Data with Ad Firms

<i>&quot;I don&#x27;t need privacy, I don&#x27;t have anything to hide.&quot;</i><p>Waiting for a good argument I can use to demolish that far too common sentiment, this will do for the time being. Disgraceful behaviour for a company to sell out its customers for pennies.

Are the ad firms who buy this data immune to prosecution? Is legal to buy or own data if it&#x27;s illegal to sell? I&#x27;d hope that it&#x27;s equally dangerous for both the buyers and sellers of this kind of data.

The article was a bit vague, do the users enter the data in their profile or were they mining chats or something like that?

I hate that Grindr is useful. There are alternatives, but if you live outside a bit city where there aren’t gay bars or LGBT events it’s pretty much the only option for easily meeting other gay guys within reasonable travel distance. They’ve got ABYSMAL privacy practices, and I also don’t like how they used RTO as a bludgeon to interrupt their employees’ attempt to unionize, but it’s where the people are. Network effects are a bitch.

A big problem with dating apps (IMHO), is how they serve as data collections mechanism for advertisers. It&#x27;s almost impossible to use them effectively without giving them tons of info (who you are, how old, where, what you like and don&#x27;t, social networks), and for the use case that makes sense for the most part. But I&#x27;m not aware of any privacy protecting service that doesn&#x27;t funnel your data to data brokers.

So you&#x27;re telling me that this whole time people on grindr were getting screwed.

I would love to know what % of gains from selling PII are the fines. The MO of breaking the law and paying the fines is never going to change with these laughable fines.