A few days after the discovery of a worrying security breach, Grindr has once again been in the limelight. This time, due to the very personal data of the 3.6 million daily active users of the dating app, especially information about their HIV status. The application makes it possible to publicly display their serological status to allow meetings on this basis. Data that might have this use on the platform but could be used differently in the wrong hands.
For example, for discrimination, persecution in certain countries, or for the purpose of increasing the price of insurance for these people. Therefore, data including HIV status, sexual orientation and GPS location were transmitted to Apptimize and Localys platforms. The scandal erupted Monday after BuzzFeed wrote an article citing the work of Antoine Pultier of Norwegian research firm SINTEF.
Grindr shares HIV status with Apptimize and Localys
Apptimize is a service for testing mobile apps before deployment. Localys, on the other hand, is a Helper, a program that lets you transfer data to another location. According to the researcher, data sent to these platforms allows to identify Grindr users by name, bypassing them. So, as we told you, data that could be exploited for malicious purposes in the event of a leak or hack – if those platforms aren’t selling their files anyway.
On Monday, Bryce Case, director of security at Grindr, assured that it will stop transmitting data specifically about the HIV status of users to Apptimize and Localys. And to start our colleagues from Axios: “I understand that the news cycle is now very focused on these issues. I think what happened to Grindr is unfair, we’ve been targetedHowever, the security manager does not say why it is necessary to transmit data about the HIV status of Grindr users to third parties.
In his defense, Grindr explains:Thousands of companies use these platforms, which have an unshakable reputation. These are industry standard practices.“, explains Scott Chen, chief technology officer of Grindr. And to add:no Grindr user information is sold to third parties. We pay these sellers to use their products. Services”. “The limited amount of information shared with these platforms is under very strict contractual terms. strict to ensure the highest level of privacy, data security and privacy for users‘ he reassures.
Quoted by our colleagues at Ars Technica, Antoine Pultier hopes for his fair share of profound change and draws parallels with another scandal affecting Happn users:standard apps, software as a service, paying third party… for obvious reasons they don’t want to admit the problem. We hope they change their methods; this answer is not satisfactory“. By the way, and in the absence of satisfactory guarantees, it is better to refrain from stating your serological status in the application.
Support our work ❤️
If you enjoyed this article, consider leaving a tip to help us keep publishing great content.
