The truth is that an app on your phone needs to be in want of profit, and that its maker will often rely on ads to make money. These ads rely on rat-king-esque networks of partnerships to make that digital cash appear. Billions of dollars disappear from companies' ad budgets each year because of the mess. At worst, you discover that the world's most popular queer dating app was passing off location data to its clientele for years. The locations of millions of gay, bi, and trans people across the world were available for purchase, according to the Journal. According to the Journal's sources, one of the company's old ad partners, MoPub, was freely passing off location data from tens of thousands of apps that use place-based information to monetize. At one point, this included Grindr. According to the Journal, this data was sold off in bulk to other partners, like Near. Near gave the data to everyone. Near can pawn off data from its upstream partners in the open because data privacy laws in the U.S. are vague and chaotic. You could buy it yourself.
The basic information necessary to support ad delivery is not shared with ad partners by Grindr.
The bar is very low. The person who owns the device can easily be tied back to the data points. Advertisers can use anonymous data like this to accurately surmise your fitness routine, favorite tunes, immigration status and many other things.
It's not uncommon for location data to be offered to ad partners, but the stakes are particularly high since it was recently reported that location data from the app was used to out a Catholic priest. The priest resigned and the news writers got their hands on the data source.
At the time, Grindr denied any wrongdoing, and pointed out in a statement to Gizmodo that it had closed off access to its user's location data since 2020. The laundry list of ad partners that Grindr has used to monetize over the years add to the scrutiny on the company.
The data used to out the priest was not public, but the data used to tie the device to the priest was.
Did those data points come from Near? From MoPub? Is it from an affiliated party? Ad networks are notoriously dense and opaque, even in states like California, which has the strongest data privacy law in the U.S. today. Again, it is a pretty low bar. Every single entity in the advertising industry has access to the information shared by Grindr and every other app that uses the real-time bidding system.
Is the blame for this case on Grindr? Absolutely. It also lies with a system that handles anonymity. If you have enough money, you can buy location data from cell towers, satellites, retailers, and countless apps that could inadvertently surface someone's sexuality. People will keep buying that data and doing whatever they want with it until the LGBT+ community stops being seen as a juicy market for ad targeting. Nobody, queer or otherwise, is safe.
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