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Chat and meet up with interesting people for free, or upgrade to Grindr XTRA or Grindr Unlimited for more features, more fun, and more chances to connect. Looking for even more? Want the ultimate Grindr experience? Grindr Subscriptions: Your subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Dating apps like Grindr could pose a national security risk, experts warn
It is the hope of some dating app users that the connections they form online will last a lifetime. When NBC News showed Demers the kind of data collected by dating apps — everything from drug use to preferred sexual position — he said he feared that the information could be weaponized by individuals and even foreign intelligence agencies. Demers said an individual's personal information on a dating app is the type of data a foreign intelligence service "would want to paint a picture of your life.
The Justice Department declined to discuss any specific apps. It has, however, expressed concerns about Chinese-owned apps. The popular dating app Grindr, which advertises itself as the "largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people," is owned by the Chinese gaming company Kunlun Tech.
Foreign ownership matters when it comes to the type of information that may wind up in government hands. So law or no law, if your future livelihood as a business depends on the government's happiness with the way you behave, you're gonna turn over that information.
Grindr's privacy policy says it "cannot guarantee the security of your personal data. But Grindr is hardly an outlier when it comes to collecting and storing highly personal information on its users.
NBC News analyzed four popular dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, Grindr and The League, and found that each collect a range of personal information. Grindr collects such data as preferred sexual positions, HIV status, old profile pictures, race, exact location and times of day the app is accessed.
Tinder collects sexual preference, messages, the user's phone number, exact location, sent messages, job and Spotify playlists.
Hinge collects sexual preference, messages, exact location, messages, race and drug use. Within a day, NBC News was able to generate a "profile" on Crastes that included knowledge about his musical preferences, how often and when he opened the apps, his personal pictures and sexual preference. European laws require dating apps to turn over requested data. Eberlein learned she had generated nearly pages of information in less than six months.
Among the information provided were what she described as "love letters to someone who probably didn't work out," sent within the app. But even with Europe's laws, getting hold of one's personal information can sometimes be a challenge. Crastes said that getting his data from Grindr took several weeks and that the company initially failed to provide a complete set of data. The popular dating app Bumble, which markets itself as letting women "make the first move," told Eberlein it couldn't find her account, then seemed to indicate it had found the account but declined to provide data.
It told Eberlein, "Bumble is a US company and there are currently no requirements under US law for us to provide this information to you. A law professor specializing in data protection law told NBC News Bumble was entering "shaky territory" in declining to provide the data. Another European user of Grindr who spoke to NBC News said he had to pass several obstacles to gain access to his personal information, such as sending over a "high-resolution copy of a government-issued ID or passport" and a "clear photo" of himself holding a piece of paper with his email address.
The Department of Defense last month recommended to the branches of the U. But the Pentagon has not issued a similar warning about Grindr. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an inter-agency government body, has raised concerns about its ownership and the risk it poses to national security, according to a Reuters story in March.
The Army said soldiers are prohibited from having personal apps on government-issued phones and, for apps on personal devices, are recommended "to research the company history, including ownership, for any potentially suspicious foreign connections the company may have.
The Coast Guard issued a statement that did not address the question about Grindr. The Navy and the Air Force did not respond to requests for comment.
Reuters also reported that Kunlun Tech had agreed to sell Grindr. NBC News asked Kunlun for confirmation but did not receive a response. NBC News sent Grindr several questions on where it stores its users' data, its Kunlun ownership and whether the app has shared any information with any Chinese government agency.
A Grindr spokesperson declined to comment on specific questions, but said that the "privacy and security" of its "users' personal data is and always will be a core value for Grindr.
These, along with other safeguards, help our users safely and securely connect and thrive, and demonstrate our respect for user privacy," the statement emailed to NBC News read. While experts say that little can be done to stop the information-gathering process within dating apps, states like California have made an effort to allow consumers to track what type of information is being collected on them.
In , then-California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill requiring that companies hand over personal data it collects on customers who request it, as well as disclose the categories of third parties with whom they are sharing the information. The effects of this law have yet to be seen as it barely came into effect earlier this month. The international community is also keeping an eye on the information being shared on dating apps. On Thursday, the Norwegian Consumer Council released a report accusing dating apps of sharing detailed user data with advertising firms and in the process, potentially violating European data protection regulations.
The company does not collect racial data, and the reference to race has been removed from the article. Andrew W. Follow NBC News. New warnings about the security of your personal information on dating apps Jan. Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. By Conor Ferguson, Andrew W. Lehren, Keir Simmons and Didi Martinez. Byers Market Newsletter. Get breaking news and insider analysis on the rapidly changing world of media and technology right to your inbox.
Army, Navy bans TikTok over spying and privacy concerns Dec. Conor Ferguson. Keir Simmons. Didi Martinez.
a grindr killer in this very city, and there is also the other tricky phenomenon of chemsex, in which men use dating the. Grindr, the world's most popular gay dating app, transmitted user-tracking codes and the app's name to more than a dozen companies, essentially.
M y friend — call him Henry — thinks that we should start at the Grindr gym. But the place is crowded. The checkout line snakes around the stacked packs of organic why almost to the door. By playing, I do mean playing: I have been happily married for a year and a half, and am not looking for dates, just subjects to chat with.
If you live in a big city, dating apps offer a rotating cast of people who "don't take life too seriously", shirtless men at the climbing wall and group photo Guess Who games.
Grindr is the original when it comes to geo-targeting dating apps. The app, which was founded in , is the most popular gay dating app; it would be difficult to find a gay man who has never downloaded or experimented with Grindr at least once.
Dating in the countryside: Being the only Grindr user in the village
It is the hope of some dating app users that the connections they form online will last a lifetime. When NBC News showed Demers the kind of data collected by dating apps — everything from drug use to preferred sexual position — he said he feared that the information could be weaponized by individuals and even foreign intelligence agencies. Demers said an individual's personal information on a dating app is the type of data a foreign intelligence service "would want to paint a picture of your life. The Justice Department declined to discuss any specific apps. It has, however, expressed concerns about Chinese-owned apps.
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Yannick Glaudin, 31, stalked the man and his then boyfriend, sending their families, friends and colleagues the intimate pictures and films using a number of fake identities, Inner London crown court was told. Glaudin, who had evaded justice for more than a year after fleeing to her native France, admitted to her crimes. She was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Monday. The judge, Silas Reid, said Glaudin was driven by revenge after her initial victim broke off contact. This triggered months of harassment, beginning with the defendant sending the sexual images to his stepfather, friends and friends of friends. Glaudin, who worked as a construction draftsman and chef, escalated the harassment from February , when her victim started a relationship with another man. In March , a false report was made to Crimestoppers claiming the boyfriend had been abusing a young boy and was linked to a known prostitute, McNamara said. Photos of the first victim using the London underground were also emailed to him.
The Chinese tech company behind popular gay dating app Grindr is set to sell its
A sex therapist called Sergei told me to download Grindr. Sergei was Ukrainian-American: he had smart glasses, tight muscles and a flat, bored voice. It was September.
Grindr and OkCupid Spread Personal Details, Study Says
Grindr comes in both free and subscription-based versions the latter called Grindr Xtra. The app makes use of a mobile device's geolocation , a feature of smartphones and other devices, which allows users to locate other users who are nearby. This is accomplished through a user interface that displays a grid of representative photos of men, arranged from nearest to furthest away. Tapping on a picture will display a brief profile for that user, as well as the option to chat, send pictures, and share one's precise location. Grindr was one of the first gay geosocial apps to launch in the iTunes App Store and has since become the largest and most popular gay mobile app in the world. It is currently available in countries. For its first anniversary on March 25, , Grindr released the app for BlackBerry devices. On March 7, , Grindr launched the app for Android devices. On June 18, , Grindr announced that it had officially hit 4 million registered users in countries across the globe. In August , Grindr released an updated version of the app requiring users to verify their accounts by providing a valid email address. Grindr says this was done to reduce spam and improve portability. Critics argued it stripped the app of its anonymity. On September 30, , Grindr released version 2. The redesigned user interface brought stability improvements, a new automatic scrolling feature, larger grid images, and a unified chat inbox. Grindr also introduced a new profile field called Grindr Tribes, allowing users to identify themselves with a niche group and filter their searches to find their type.
Apps Like Grindr For Straight People
By Natasha Singer and Aaron Krolik. This surveillance system enables scores of businesses, whose names are unknown to many consumers, to quietly profile individuals, target them with ads and try to sway their behavior. The report appears just two weeks after California put into effect a broad new consumer privacy law. The Norwegian group said it filed complaints on Tuesday asking regulators in Oslo to investigate Grindr and five ad tech companies for possible violations of the European data protection law. In a statement, the Match Group, which owns OkCupid and Tinder, said it worked with outside companies to assist with providing services and shared only specific user data deemed necessary for those services. In a statement, Grindr said it had not received a copy of the report and could not comment specifically on the content. The personal data that ad software extracts from apps is typically tied to a user-tracking code that is unique for each mobile device. Companies use the tracking codes to build rich profiles of people over time across multiple apps and sites. But even without their real names, individuals in such data sets may be identified and located in real life. For the report, the Norwegian Consumer Council hired Mnemonic, a cybersecurity firm in Oslo, to examine how ad tech software extracted user data from 10 popular Android apps.
