The WSJ’s Old News

The Wall Street Journal has run a sensationalized story about the historical vulnerabilities in the adtech ecosystem that were improperly exploited to allegedly obtain data from some of Grindr’s former ad partners. The issues with adtech are real, unfortunately the WSJ is using scare tactics in a ploy for clicks.

A few things we want to make abundantly clear:

• What the WSJ describes would not be possible with our privacy practices today, practices we proactively implemented two years ago
• Grindr takes the privacy of its users extremely seriously, and we have put privacy before profit:
• Since early 2020, Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors, restricting the information we share to IP address, advertising ID, and the basic information necessary to support ad delivery
• Grindr does not share users’ precise location, we do not share user profile information, and we do not share even industry standard data like age or gender
• Grindr gives all our users globally the choice to control whether they receive personalized advertising    
• Grindr works with a limited number of ad partners who we review semiannually against rigorous data privacy and best practice standards
• The tradeoff of reducing the data shared with ad partners to below even industry standard is the ad quality is lower for users and of course Grindr’s ad revenue is lower as well

Our users value privacy, and we continue to put our users’ needs first. The issues threatening the LGBTQ+ community are real – issues like homophobia, prejudice, and state sponsored surveillance and violence, among others. Protecting privacy and protecting the LGBTQ+ community is and must be an ongoing effort for all of us. Grindr literally puts its money where its mouth is on this issue, I wish the WSJ would do the same.

-Patrick Lenihan, VP of Communications