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Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

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Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#301

Post by DataWorker »

saagarjha wrote: post #220
mbesto wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point on why you should not take money or sell your business to Chinese investors. Their price points for pricing companies is strange (e.g. a lot higher than western pricing) and it would make sense that they're doing it for other, perhaps more nefarious, reasons.

Acquisitions for a company's data is not something that's limited to China.

He seems to be suggesting that they place an abnormally high valuation on that data which suggests, maybe I’m misinterpreting?, nefarious aims.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#304

Post by DataWorker »

overcast wrote: post #77
sgt101 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "no pay" is an option most people will take it, if it isn't an option because the mechanisms that make it possible are banned then people will pay - or there will be no service. This isn't physics; the laws of user behaviour are mutable, and legislation is completely possible. The outcome of the erosion of privacy is the end of our ability to adapt as a society; there will be no new ways of doing things or dealing…

I understand the privacy issues are horrible, and places like HN are super vocal about it. But the overall majority either don't know, or don't care, or mostly both. People dump their entire lives on to the internet, hoping for some type of validation from their peers. Banks destroyed many lives ten years ago, and yet we bailed them out, and are still using them. People in the end just don't care. Especially after ti…

Which is why protections must be put in place. If a business model is detrimental to the health of a nation, then maybe the laws need to change to prohibit such a business model from preying on the citizenry.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#305

Post by JoshuaRLi »

buro9 wrote: post #45

If you are using Grindr on Android, install and use NetGuard. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.ne... https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard NetGuard is an open source local VPN that allows you to block DNS lookups to prevent calls to 3rd parties, and it does not require root access. Calls to all of the 3rd parties mentioned are blockable. Grindr does not need many domains to be operational to work,…

Man, those features should be part of a system app in the stock Android ROMs. Privacy tools need more public exposure.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#306

Post by joshstrange »

tallanvor wrote: post #295
joshstrange wrote: post #180

I'd be interested to see how Scruff/Jack'd/etc stacks up. My guess is Scruff does better (it has always been a better designed/developed app) but I understand why they focused only on Grindr as it does have the largest market share (admittedly a guess). Grindr has never been exactly a bastion of good programming... Their app has always been subpar at best with infrequent updates, months/year long bugs, terrible UI/Na…

Grindr has the largest share of users by far. I suspect SCRUFF is #2, both because it is almost as old, but also because they clearly skew towards a different segment of the community. I assume that Jack'd and Hornet are more popular in certain geographical areas. But I agree with pretty much everything you say, except for wanting to emphasis that getting people to enter their status is crucial in helping to normaliz…

It's kind of funny, and while this wasn't always the case until I educated myself on it, but I trust/feel safer with people who are positive more than those who aren't in some ways. Having sex with something who is positive but undetectable (even unprotected) is better than having sex with someone who doesn't know their status. Even putting HIV aside people who are positive are being tested much more regularly than the general public. Similarly to people on PrEP as they are required to get tested (only for HIV but I know a number of people who also take the opportunity to get tested for other things) every 3 months.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#307

Post by mrkurt »

rurounijones wrote: post #290
mrkurt wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you've just described a contractual agreement. You're still sending data to a third party. I'm not sure we're disagreeing here.

Would this be a better to distinguish? AWS does not care about the data, does not want to see the data and goes out of its way to make it damn hard for it to see the data. The data is a black box to them and this is by design. You are not sending them the raw data in a format that they require for analyses. You are just sending them bits and bytes that they store for you. The analyses third-parties in this case are t…

I just don't think that's a meaningful distinction. There's no distinct line between "company that hosts all your data but doesn't analyze it" and "company that does data analytics on your data". It's a gradient, there are all kinds of companies that fit on that gradient, and it's weird to lambast people for using those companies as if it's a technical choice, when what we really want is people making good choices about the data protections their providers have in place.

AWS even has analytics products that require access to your data. I generally trust those more than sketchy analytics companies, but it's entirely because of the contractual protections AWS has in place, not because they're inherently different.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#308

Post by rdtsc »

stevehawk wrote: post #299
rdtsc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. Combine this with the Chinese OPM hack, where extremely personal data for most government employees with security clearance has been stolen, and they have a blackmail goldmine on their hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... They can verify what has been reported on sf-86 vs what might be found from this service. Any affairs or issues not reported are ripe for blackmail. Possibil…

Uh, none of this would be on an SF86. You don't report affairs or dating on an SF86. They could still correlate membership and expose anyone who is private about their sexuality or hobby, but they won't be able to say "omg you didn't tell the government you banged Paul!"

You're right, that specific stuff is not on sf-86. But was pessimistic that more than just sf-86 was exfiltrated. From the wiki saw "that OPM systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former, and prospective federal government employees, to include U.S. military personnel, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated". I read that as notes from people doing the background checks, which would include some of that kind of information.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#309

Post by esilverberg2 »

bdhess wrote: post #275
esilverberg2 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO of SCRUFF here, and daily reader of HN. We have not, do not, and would not share this information with third parties. The data that we share with our third-party ad providers is: - Your location (so you can get those local car dealer ads) - Your gender - Your age - The targeting keyword "gay" We currently use AdMob and MoPub to provide our network advertising. More broadly, this kind of information is never somet…

Is any of this data shared with third parties for paid users of the app?

Our paid users do not see third-party ad network ads, so no.

There are other third party services we use that may see various pieces of information from free and paid members. Stripe, for example, manages some payment processing and collects some user data; ZenDesk manages support tickets for us and also collects various pieces of user data.

In the coming months we will be sharing more information about the third parties with whom we work and on whom our service is built, and how data is shared between them. When it comes to ad networks, however, our integration is limited to what I mentioned above.

Re: Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties

#310

Post by dang »

madeofpalk wrote: post #152
dang wrote: post #149

Please don't use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

fixed.

Great, thanks. I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16736341 and marked it off-topic.
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