Grindr to Pay $35 Million to Settle UK Lawsuit
Thousands of users accused the gay dating app of sharing sensitive personal information -- including HIV statuses -- with advertisers.
Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million — or about $35 million — to settle a lawsuit brought by thousands of users in the United Kingdom who allege that the U.S.-based gay dating app shared highly sensitive personal information, including some users’ HIV statuses, with advertising companies.
The settlement ends a legal battle that began when the U.K. law firm Austen Hays filed a claim in the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024, accusing Grindr of violating U.K. privacy laws. The lawsuit alleged that Grindr improperly shared users’ personal information mainly before April 3, 2018, and between May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020.
Austen Hays represented 12,000 clients who joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs. If the settlement is split evenly among them, each would receive £2,167, or about $2,931.
Under the settlement, Grindr will pay £13 million by the end of 2026 and another £13 million by the end of March 2027.
Grindr said in a September 2 U.S. regulatory filing that it had resolved the U.K. group action involving what it described as “historical data practices before 2020,” when the app was owned and controlled by the Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech.
In a statement announcing the settlement, Grindr denied wrongdoing.
“The settlement includes no findings or admission of liability,” the California-based company said in the statement. “While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period.”
Founded in 2009 to help men seeking sex with other men coordinate hookups, Grindr has grown to more than 15 million users worldwide. The company was sold to the investment group San Vicente Acquisition in 2020 as part of a $608 million deal that installed new management.
The company later hired George Arison, a gay man, as CEO in October 2022, shortly before it went public on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with Tiga Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company. The deal valued the app at $2.1 billion. Grindr, which claims to be the largest dating app for gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people, is currently valued at $2.66 billion.
In April 2018, Grindr announced that it would stop sharing users’ HIV statuses with third-party companies after Norwegian researchers revealed that it had shared the data with two firms.
In 2021, Norway’s data protection authority fined Grindr 65 million Norwegian kroner — equivalent to about $6 million at the time — for violating the country’s data protection rules. Grindr appealed, but the country’s court of appeal upheld the fine in October 2025, concluding that the company’s claim that it did not sell personal user information to third parties for advertising purposes was “clearly misleading.”
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