The Proximity Conundrum

 In a recent post published on LinkedIn Grindr CEO George Arison boasted that "Grindr actively chooses not to give information about our users to third-party partners—even if that means fewer ad dollars".

It seems a bit rich, considering Grindr's pretty chequered past when it comes to privacy. I guess the sudden focus on privacy stems from Grindr's stock market float, putting them under more scrutiny to operate in a different way than they used to now they are a publicly traded company and responsible to the markets and their shareholders.

Arison conveniently neglected to mention that Grindr was given a massive $6m fine by the Norwegian Data Inspectorate a few years ago - for failing to protect the privacy of their users. In 2022 the UK Information Commissioner's office issued Grindr with a reprimand, believing Grindr had infringed GDPR Regulations at the time. The UK Solicitors firm Austen Hays currently have a pending group claim stating that "Grindr appears to have shared user's personal data for profit with numerous advertisers for online behavioural marketing purposes". Most worryingly, they may have shared sensitive information such as your HIV status. 

The API scandal

Going back even further, someone reverse engineered Grindr's API - and figured out that by making a few smart calls to their REST API they could obtain information about users as well as pretty accurately pinpoint their location. It was also discovered that HIV status, if collected from the user, was transmitted along with other user data to several third parties. Ouch. Since then the holes have been plugged, Grindr have stated they will treat HIV data separately and will not be shared or allow you to filter on it.

The Proximity Conundrum

All grid-based dating/hookup apps like Grindr, Hornet and Growler have the same selling point: They show you proximity to other users in a grid, allowing you to browse and contact users that are near to you - obviously with the view to instantly meet each other. It's the mix of proximity and instantaneousness that is the formula for success for these types of apps. But it also comes with a price: It's fairly easy to pinpoint someone's location, and fairly easy to track your movements through these apps. Just now in 2024 card-based apps Bumble and Hinge were found to have flaws where you could pinpoint the location of users down to 2 metres:

Bumble and Hinge allowed stalkers to pinpoint users’ locations down to 2 meters, researchers say | TechCrunch

During the recent Paris Olympics Grindr created a virtual "fence" around the Olympic Village:

It really neatly illustrates the conundrum: if you can't see how far away other users are the app suddenly has much less value. Who wants to go ask each one how far they are away, just for a hookup? The whole point of the app is to see who is near you in the grid. That's how they make their money. 

You can to a certain point protect yourself here: 
Turn off Show Me in Explore Searches ✅

Turn off Show My Distance ✅

Show me in Explore returns your profile to someone who is outside of your area, searching for users in a different city or country. 

Turn off Show My Distance and the exact distance from your user to their profile is not shown when you tap their profile from the grid.

...but that only helps to a certain degree. Let me explain.

Let's take a random user in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In Grindr I select a location in Joburg, for example Sandton.
I tap on Hairy Dad from the grid. I add him as a Favourite so I can easily go back and find him.

"Hairy Dad" appears in a certain place in the grid. I make a mental note of this. To then narrow down his location I move the map location up towards Woodmead. I go back to the grid and check where Hairy Dad is now, relative to the users who were next to him before. If he is further up the grid it means he is nearer to where I selected. I then go back and choose another map location, and then see where he is in the grid. By choosing 3 different locations you can triangulate and from there, you can narrow it down even further. For example, I may find he is somewhere in Marlboro Gardens. I can't tell exactly where but now I know the (small) area where he is. 

I can even move my map around just slightly to pinpoint the street he's in, by using the technique above.

So I start chatting to Hairy Dad. He says he's at home. Sends me a few photos. One of them is taken from his living room, looking out on his balcony. Cross-referencing with Google Street View I know know which block he lives in. Finding someone's location from a few clues is easier than you might think, just check out Jose Monkey on TikTok. The user then tells me he works as a lawyer. On the Monday I repeat the same exercise as above. Tue and Wed I do the same and find he always moves his location to the same place every weekday. So now I know the area where he works. All I have to do now is find what law firms are in that area, and if several move my map location just slightly to pinpoint it. 

So now I have his photo, his home location and his work location. I can probably even follow him on weekends, maybe he goes to a gay club and fires up Grindr from there? Ah wait, he does. On several weekends his location is near The Factory, a gay nude bar in a nondescript industrial area in Doornfontein.

If you think this is creepy, it's because it kind of is. I just wanted to illustrate the downside of grid-based apps and how easy it might be to follow someone through the app and gain an insight into their lives.

What is shared, to whom?

All the apps send data about your user to third parties. These are marketing platforms that take data about users to in turn build up demographical profiles to enable advertisers to reach their desired demographics. 

Grindr is a good example of to how many places metadata about your user is being shared.

Notice when you now log in you have an option to accept all cookies, reject all or select? Tap Show Purposes:

Confused yet? This is called Consent Management. Grindr have gone to the biggest global player in the field for this, One Trust, and through their platform you can now consent to metadata about your profile to be shared with third parties. Exactly what is shared is detailed here. It's not much. But the amount of choices are bewildering and the list of vendors is quite long. You can go to Settings --> Consent Preference Center at any time and toggle what your app provides. I doubt many people ever do this - but you can!