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Gay Dating App Grindr Is Letting Other Companies See User HIV Status, Location Data (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users' HIV status to two other companies, BuzzFeed News has learned. The two companies -- Apptimize and Localytics, which help optimize apps -- receive some of the information that Grindr users choose to include in their profiles, including their HIV status and "last tested date." Because the HIV information is sent together with users' GPS data, phone ID, and email, it could identify specific users and their HIV status, according to Antoine Pultier, a researcher at the Norwegian nonprofit SINTEF, which first identified the issue.
Grindr was founded in 2009 and has been increasingly branding itself as the go-to app for healthy hookups and gay cultural content. In December, the company launched an online magazine dedicated to cultural issues in the queer community. The app offers free ads for HIV-testing sites, and last week, it debuted an optional feature that would remind users to get tested for HIV every three to six months. But the new analysis, confirmed by cybersecurity experts who analyzed SINTEF's data and independently verified by BuzzFeed News, calls into question how seriously the company takes its users' privacy. SINTEF's analysis also showed that Grindr was sharing its users' precise GPS position, "tribe" (meaning what gay subculture they identify with), sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, and phone ID to other third-party advertising companies. And this information, unlike the HIV data, was sometimes shared via "plain text," which can be easily hacked.
Grindr was founded in 2009 and has been increasingly branding itself as the go-to app for healthy hookups and gay cultural content. In December, the company launched an online magazine dedicated to cultural issues in the queer community. The app offers free ads for HIV-testing sites, and last week, it debuted an optional feature that would remind users to get tested for HIV every three to six months. But the new analysis, confirmed by cybersecurity experts who analyzed SINTEF's data and independently verified by BuzzFeed News, calls into question how seriously the company takes its users' privacy. SINTEF's analysis also showed that Grindr was sharing its users' precise GPS position, "tribe" (meaning what gay subculture they identify with), sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, and phone ID to other third-party advertising companies. And this information, unlike the HIV data, was sometimes shared via "plain text," which can be easily hacked.
Let's turn the comments into a Grindr hookup for us geeks
nt
First rule of Grindr: What happens in Grindr, stays in Grindr
Second rule of Grindr: Never tell the truth about your HIV status
Anyone else find it funny when it said plain text can be easily hacked. Author apparently doesn't understand plain text doesn't need to be hacked, it's already plain text
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
What does this even mean?
1) Obtain full DBS
2) Blackmail emails found (paired with social media info)
3) Profit!
No âoe ? âoe step needed!
leaky black boxes of comfort.
I wasn't aware that apps, or programs, or code in general had sexual preferences. I think they mean the Grindr app used by homosexuals is making data that ignorant people have inappropriately shared available to others which seems like a case of you get what you deserve for over sharing...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
They should not be prevented to move to Israel just because they are carrying HIV. ;)
Who gave it that name? That's a horrible name. It would be like naming a family horse trail vacation company "rash.com".
Table-ized A.I.
Where do they put the towers? I though HIV+ perps were all hustled-off to that bran + water barbed-fenced gulag in Western Utah. You know ... oh give me a bone, where the Salt-Sea doth roam ...
.. on Earth would you put that on your dating profile?? Or did they redefine what HIV meant too?
What's the issue here?
This is an app designed to facilitate sexual encounters with other degenerates in your general vicinity and has the option to state your HIV status and when you were last tested, as well as the ability to post a photo of yourself and specify your age, etc. so that the degenerates around you can decide if they would like to proposition you.
It's sort of all core to how the thing works. It's not going to work very well without all that stuff.
It's not a dating app, it's a hookup app for male homosexuals. There are people for whom it does in fact matter, and the least problematic group of 'em are those who are deliberately seeking sex partners whose HIV status is the same as theirs.
Part of how you can tell the difference is that hookup apps assume that, basically, you're for various reasons unable or unwilling to hire a sex worker--but you probably should, if you're not willing to even talk enough before having sex to discuss things related to safe sex. Of course, that might also be why you may not be able to hire any of the local sex workers anymore...
Disclosure is part of the law in a number of jurisdictions. Others don't want to have that strange moment when one of the two says, "Oh, BTW, I'm poz.". A lot of poz guys get broken hearts that way. Some guys want to be aware of the status, while it doesn't matter to others.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
When homosexuals are looking for a dating partner, the ultimate goal is to sock and fock. Knowing someone's HIV status makes it easier to avoid getting yet another STD.
Disclaimer - I believe Grindr sharing this data, and other data is bad. And other sites sharing unknown types and amounts of data without the individuals knowledge is bad. BUT - the person chose to disclose this information to a third party in a non-medical setting. If the same person got up on a bar stool and told the whole bar they were HIV positive, everyone in the bar would NOT magically be bound by HIPAA to keep their secret... Don't disclose private information to untrusted entities.
Number one rule of the web: Don't disclose sensitive personal information to startups or apps.
Number two rule of the web: Don't disclose sensitive personal information to startups or apps.
Number three rule of the web: DON'T DISCLOSE SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION TO STARTUPS OR APPS!
etc..
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
To all the gay-bashers on here: this is about gay *men,* not gay people in general. Us lesbians are actually a bit cleaner than the average straight woman when it comes to STDs, and certainly cleaner than the average straight man, and yes the CDC has stats to back this up. :) The problem isn't gay, the problem is male anatomy, apparently. And maybe male attitudes to sex.
HIV is spread BECAUSE people who have it then go spread it and don't tell their partners. HIV users should have to wear a fucking tattoo or something on their face. It's completely unfair to be infected by someone who knows they have HIV but is protected by society that allows them to run around freely giving it to others. The outrage of being outed is part of the problem. HIV could easily be eradicated if not for the privacy "issues" that let these assholes hide and infect others.
People are spending their precious moderation points on these AC comments. So sad.
You should know if the person sitting next to you at work can kill you with their blood. You should definitely know if your doctor or dentist can kill you with their blood.
Sandvine (AKA Procera Networks) recently and quietly added a signature for Grindr, more or less directly when that department was out-sourced to India. The plain-text "feature" is a chilling fact knowing this, and knowing that their products can excerpt details from dataflows in realtime, adding only configuration.
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
Would not surprise me at all if they receive a rather nasty letter from Health and Human Services about the disclosure of conditions like HIV to third parties. You would not believe the amount of training HR departments have to go through on this sort of thing, so either the people behind Grindr weren't listening to their own HR and legal staff, or that staff is actively complicit in the act and are not in for a fun time.
And sadly, it does happen that HR people are complicit in these kinds of things. I worked at a well known computer OEM in the SF Bay Area once upon a time. It is certainly true that the Bay Area has a large Asian population, but out of roughly 300 employees at this site, I counted maybe 10 who were any race OTHER than Asian. That would mean white, black, hispanic, native american, indian (even though India is technically on the Asian continent, I'm not counting them as Asians) and any other race I'm leaving out. I started making some noises about this, particularly because my coworkers were going out of their way to treat me like shit, and was very quickly shown the door. If the HR department had actually done its job, basically the entire management, including the CEO, would have been fired, and the company would have unraveled. Funnily enough, the HR rep who showed me the door and helped cover this up, was non-Asian and was shown the door herself only a couple months later. Probably because they figured out she was a lesbian and very clearly had a thing for a VP, but that's a whole other story.
I guess I understand the gay thing in theory. I just can't relate on any practical level.
Hey, if it's love, it's love, and love is difficult enough to find in the "straight" world as it is.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
I'm about one or two more posts like this before I rip the Internet cable out of my property and throw away my phone.
App for spreading AIDS in degenerate pervert community? This is just brilliant while politically correct, especially when you subscribe for "love is love" etc.
They only make up about 2% of the population. Is grinder it helping to lower that?
Try to get as many people infected with HIV as possible, sell them meds that will not cure them, scare the living shit out of people so they don't have sex. So as a good business model we can reduce the world's population by subtle kills, encourage abortion for "undesirables", prevent the rest from procreating, and make a buck off of it while we make the corpse of Margaret Sanger and the majority of the billionaires in this world happy.
You can get double aids, in fact already having aids makes you super sensitive to getting a second strain of it. The HIV status is used by people trying to pretend they are being safe while having unprotected sex with strangers and "bugchasers" whose fetish includes having sex with/contracting AIDs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I hadn't realized that there was so much HIV within the gay community that they had to declare it on the app profile. Maybe they shouldn't be so promiscuous....
I did say 'least problematic' group. Most of the discussion about all of this isn't happening in public, and some of the people I've met who are offended by bringing it up are involved in shaping the public health response to HIV...so, unfortunately, a decent number of them aren't 'trying to pretend' but rather completely unaware because the people whose job it is to make sure they know better are playing ostrich.
You can get double aids, in fact already having aids makes you super sensitive to getting a second strain of it. The HIV status is used by people trying to pretend they are being safe while having unprotected sex with strangers and "bugchasers" whose fetish includes having sex with/contracting AIDs.
Please educate yourself. HIV+ != Aids. The Aids comes as a result of your body immunity gives up to HIV after a certain period of time of having the virus. Unlike in the past, if you have HIV+, with the current medication, you can control the virus which is called "undetected." In other words, the virus may be hiding or in hibernate state which is less likely be contagious (but best way is still practicing safe sex).
I thought people who are on here would be educated. Apparently, many of them are not and very immature.
HIV superinfection.
There is no such thing as double AIDS. If you had AIDS and went on HAART, the chance of being infected with a second strain, ie. superinfection, is remote. Source: my primary physician who is also an HIV specialist.
And the HIV status on hookup apps/ads is primarily used for other cases, not the deranged cases your cited.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
There are missing facts from that page, IMO. People who are on HAART on already contract seldom, if ever, become subsequently infected with another strain which may be resistant to their own meds. If this actually happened, they would cease to become undetectable, ie. their meds no longer would work. As long as the meds work, and the viral load remains undetectable, viral particles that could be analyzed to determine the presence of another strain are simply absent, by definition.
Thus, superinfection is really only a concern prior to going on HAART and becoming undetectable. Ie. you can initially be infected by multiple strains.
But once you go on treatment - which will depend on which strain and mutations you got - this is no longer a real issue.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Super infections are common.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not in people already on HAART.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
What does HAART have to do with using a dating app?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.