Privacy and data protection laws are increasingly demanding. The objective? Protect the user from bad practices that some applications and services use to do business. If an application violates any of the policies imposed by each government, it can take legal action, even apply millionaire fines. This is what happened to a dating app for sharing your private data.
The Norwegian Data Protection Agency has fined Grindr, the popular dating app for people belonging to the LGTB community, for illegally sharing private data of registered users in the application. The fine amounts to NOK 100 million, approximately € 10 million at the exchange rate . Grindr shares private information with up to 5 third-party advertisers in order to do business through advertising.
The exact location, user tracking code and the name of the app, are some of the private data that is shared. Data that may reveal sexual orientation without the consent of the users . Among the different advertiser companies was MoPub, Twitter’s mobile advertising company. Currently many of the applications we use share data with third parties, but these must be completely anonymous and the user has to express their consent.
A practice that you can put into danger to many users
Tobias Judin , head of the international department of the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, has spoken about this practice. It mentions that they not only violate European privacy rights, but can endanger those users who are using the app in countries where same-sex relationships are an illegal practice.
Bill Shafton, vice president of business and legal affairs at Grindr, mentions in a statement to The Verge portal that the company is always alert to the evolution of user data protection laws and that at Grindr constantly improve their policies to ensure the privacy of people who use the application . Shafton hopes to clarify what happened and reach an agreement with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.
Grindr has until February 15 to explain what happened to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority , as well as the measures that will be taken from now on.
It is not the first time that the bad privacy policy of the dating app has been questioned. In January 2020, The New York Times newspaper showed how the Grindr app on Android was able to show an extremely precise location of the users who were registered in the application.
