Grindr pays £26M to settle UK privacy class action

Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million ($35.1 million) to settle a UK class action alleging that it shared users' personal data, including information about their HIV status, with third parties. Grindr is a location-based dating and social networking app primarily aimed at gay and bisexual men, transgender people, and the wider queer community. According to Grindr's Form 8-K filing, the company will make two £13 million installments, due by December 31, 2026, and March 31, 2027. The settlement includes no finding or admission of liability. The claim was issued in England's High Court in April 2024 by law firm Austen Hays and served on Grindr in April 2025. The claim drew on research published by SINTEF in 2018 concerning Grindr's sharing of user data with third-party analytics companies Localytics and Apptimize. According to the research, the information shared included users' HIV status and last test date, sexual orientation, and GPS location. Austen Hays told The Register at the time that the sharing could allow "a potentially unlimited number of third parties" to target or customize advertising to Grindr users. The lawsuit alleged that Grindr violated UK data protection law and that the allegedly illegal data sharing took place before April 3, 2018, and between May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020. "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's 8-K stated. In its regulatory filing, Grindr said the challenged practices dated from before 2020, when the company was owned and controlled by Chinese company Kunlun and before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) forced Kunlun to sell the app [PDF]. The company said that since 2020, it has "overhauled its privacy program with a keen focus on the unique needs of its community." "Grindr is and remains a safe space for users, committed to transparency, user control, and responsible data practices," it added. The UK settlement is roughly five times the dollar value of the Norwegian fine Grindr spent years unsuccessfully challenging. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposed a 65 million kroner ($6.9 million) fine in December 2021 for violations of the GDPR. That case did not concern the disclosure of users' HIV status, but regulators found that identifying someone as a Grindr user constituted special category data concerning their sexual orientation or sex life. They also found that Grindr had shared personal data with advertising partners without valid consent. The information included users' GPS locations, IP addresses, advertising IDs, ages and genders, as well as the fact that they used Grindr. Norway's Privacy Appeals Board upheld the fine in September 2023. Grindr then challenged that decision in court, losing in Oslo District Court in 2024 and again before the Borgarting Court of Appeal in October 2025. The Register asked Grindr whether it wished to comment beyond its regulatory filing. ®