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Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

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Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#3
post #2

Does anyone have any information on how Scruff handles that information? Also, does HIPAA say anything about technology companies outside of the medical field's data that may voluntarily collect HIV status?

> Also, does HIPAA say anything about technology companies outside of the medical field's data that may voluntarily collect HIV status?

No, HIPAA binds only covered entities, which are (basically) care providers, insurers, and certain other parties in certain business relationships with care providers and insurers.

If you give out your health information to a dating service, it's not protected by HIPAA.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#4
post #2

Does anyone have any information on how Scruff handles that information? Also, does HIPAA say anything about technology companies outside of the medical field's data that may voluntarily collect HIV status?

> Also, does HIPAA say anything about technology companies outside of the medical field's data that may voluntarily collect HIV status? No, HIPAA binds only covered entities, which are (basically) care providers, insurers, and certain other parties in certain business relationships with care providers and insurers. If you give out your health information to a dating service, it's not protected by HIPAA.

That's not to say there may not be other laws that govern how you protect a user's data though.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#6
post #2

Does anyone have any information on how Scruff handles that information? Also, does HIPAA say anything about technology companies outside of the medical field's data that may voluntarily collect HIV status?

I don't think HIPAA would have any jurisdiction in this area.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#7
It's become clear over the last year there is a strong need for a data privacy regulatory agency in US government. I understand that regulation hampers growth, but the tech industry is mature and developed to the point that it's time to reel in "moving fast and breaking things" a bit.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#8
For what it's worth, the most private data here is shared to analytics companies for Grindr's only analytical use. My guess is that Grindr's agreement with Apptimize and Localytics asks for the strictest possible protection of that data. If anyone at Apptimize or Localytics has access to that data, I'd be incredibly surprised.

This sort of deal isn't the same as sharing the HIV status to Google or Facebook so that advertisers can target or exclude that user information for the purposes of advertising.

For people who think this is still wrong, I'm curious what their pragmatic alternative is. How else are app developers supposed to analyze their app performance? The open source, self-hosted pickings are slim. (I can only think of Piwik, which in my experience has a dated feature set and severe performance issues.) Not everyone can afford to perform their own product analysis. Using a third-party analytics saas is kind of the only way to go and seems like a reasonable tradeoff of security for product visibility.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#9

We need a new business model for social media, one which actually serves the customer instead of trying to lure them into productizing themselves.

The problem obviously is competing with free...although, maybe we are beginning to realize that there are hidden costs to "free"...

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#10

We need a new business model for social media, one which actually serves the customer instead of trying to lure them into productizing themselves.

So you're going to pay to use it right? If this imaginary product managed to get 1% of Facebook to hand over their credit card. That would be the most wildly successful pay to use application in existence. Will never happen. Social Media sites rely on mass adoption, among those who refuse to pay for just about anything.
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