A third-party app can extract your profile and location information from Grindr

The leaking of information is the order of the day. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal was the last straw for the patience of users in terms of their privacy But after that, we haven't stopped publishing news related to the leak of personal data.

Today we have to talk about Grindr. In March, a report already revealed that this dating app had privacy issues and could expose users' personal information.In that study they denounced the possibility of locating people on the map. Something that, without a doubt, cannot be liked by anyone.

At that time, Grindr officials were quick to deny that statement. They indicated that pinpointing someone's exact location on a map was simply impossible.

As if this were not enough, in April of this year the news broke that Grindr had been sharing information about your HIV status with other companies. And we are not talking about a silly piece of information, but about a medical issue, absolutely private, the importance of which should not go further in any case.

Now a new investigation by Queer Europe reveals that there is an application capable of locating up to 600 Grindr users in a matter of minutes . As you read it.

Where does the information saved on Grindr go?

The research published by Queer Europe is clear. The report details that there is an app called Fuckr, introduced in 2015, that can locate up to 600 Grindr users in just a few minutes The tool can locate them in a position in the map with an accuracy of between two and four meters. In this way, it can be accurate enough to locate a person in a store, a house, and even the room they are in.

But how is this possible? This application called Fuckr, which is completely free, is based on the private Grindr API. This means that the creators of this app have direct access to the user database of this dating app.

Through a technology called trilateration, they can find users. If a person has access to this information, can follow anyone throughout the day.

Within Fuckr, then, it is enough to apply certain filtering criteria to locate people according to their ethnic origin, the relationships they have or other information of interest. But this is not all. If users have included sensitive information on Grindr such as ethnicity, body type, photo, HIV status, last HIV test and even preferred sexual positions, it can be disclosed through this channel.

Doors open to homophobic bullying

Experts believe that disclosing this private information opens the door to homophobic bullying.We must not lose sight of the fact that Grindr offers users of the application locate people in countries where LGBTQ+ people are not accepted We are referring to countries like Algeria , Turkey, Belarus, Ethiopia, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Azerbaijan, China, Malaysia or Indonesia. Although the company has already blocked location tracking in Russia, Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The first thing Grindr should do, however, is revoke the ability for Fuckr to continue accessing the application's database . It would also be interesting to protect information about the precise location of users.