Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to settle a UK lawsuit brought by around 12,000 users who alleged the dating app shared highly sensitive personal information, including HIV status in some cases, with advertising companies. The settlement resolves a group action in the High Court of England and Wales but includes no admission of liability by the company.
The legal action was launched in 2024 by law firm Austen Hays on behalf of thousands of UK users who claimed Grindr breached privacy laws by allowing third parties access to personal data before 2020. The allegations included the sharing of information relating to users' HIV status, HIV testing history, PrEP use, ethnicity, sexual orientation and sex lives.
Under the settlement, Grindr will make two payments of £13 million, with the first due by the end of 2026 and the second by the end of March 2027. If distributed equally among the 12,000 claimants, the payout would amount to an average of around £2,167 per person, although individual payments may vary.
Grindr said the claims relate to "historical data practices before 2020", when the company was owned by Chinese gaming firm Beijing Kunlun Tech. The LGBTQ+ dating app said the settlement "includes no findings or admission of liability" and that it continues to dispute the allegations.
In a regulatory filing, the company acknowledged "the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period" and said it had significantly strengthened its privacy programme since changing ownership in 2020. Grindr added that it remains committed to transparency, user control and responsible data practices.
The case follows years of scrutiny over Grindr's handling of sensitive user information. In 2018, reports emerged that the platform had shared users' HIV status and related health information with third-party analytics providers. Grindr later announced it would stop sharing that information, while the Information Commissioner's Office reprimanded the company in 2022 over privacy transparency failings.
Lawyers representing claimants argued that the alleged sharing of sensitive health and sexuality data caused significant distress to users and raised serious concerns about privacy protections for LGBTQ+ people online. The settlement brings the two-year legal battle to a close without a court ruling on the merits of the allegations.
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