Media reports have emerged that the user locations of people signed in to Grindr were collected and sold from 2017 until around 2020.

The data was sold in a computerised process to enable hyperlocal advertising to be served to users.

When Grindr began sharing this data with ad networks, executives reportedly didn’t consider it to be a security risk.

However, a 2021 outing of a Catholic priest - when a newspaper found his Grindr profile information using commercially available records of app signal data - highlighted the very real risks posed by Grindr's prioritisation of commercial revenue over user safety.

In 2021, Grindr was fined 65 million Norwegian crown (around £5 million) after a major data breach.