Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to settle a lawsuit brought by more than 12,000 UK users who accused the dating app of sharing sensitive personal data, including their HIV status, with outside advertising companies. The settlement was reached on September 2, 2026, closing a case filed at the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024.
What the lawsuit alleged
The claim, brought through the law firm Austen Hays on behalf of roughly 12,000 claimants, argued that Grindr transmitted users’ HIV status and other health-related information to a network of advertising and analytics firms without adequate consent. Court filings describe the data as having reached more than 130 external companies between 2017 and 2023, though Grindr says the conduct at issue took place before 2020, when the app was owned by the Chinese firm Beijing Kunlun Tech.
HIV status is treated as special category data under UK and EU privacy law, meaning it carries stricter protections than ordinary personal information because of the harm that can follow if it is exposed. Users on Grindr can choose to disclose their HIV status and testing history on their profiles, information some rely on for dating and health disclosure purposes within the app itself, not for sharing with third parties.
Terms of the settlement
Under the agreement, Grindr will pay £13 million by the end of 2026 and the remaining £13 million by the end of March 2027. If split evenly among the roughly 12,000 claimants, each would receive about £2,167. The settlement contains no admission of liability or wrongdoing by Grindr.
Grindr said in a statement that it disputes the allegations but acknowledged what it called the distress and loss of trust some UK users felt over its handling of data before 2020. The company has previously said it overhauled its approach to data sharing and advertising partnerships in the years since.
A pattern going back to 2021
This case echoes an earlier action against Grindr. Norway’s data protection authority, Datatilsynet, fined the company roughly 65 million kroner in 2021 after finding it had shared user data, including GPS location, age, gender and app usage that could reveal a person’s HIV status by association, with ad-tech partners without valid consent. That fine followed a complaint originally filed by the Norwegian Consumer Council in 2020. The UK settlement announced this month is a separate, later legal action covering the same broad category of alleged conduct, brought by different claimants under UK civil procedure rather than a regulatory fine.
Privacy advocates have long warned that dating apps built around identity and health disclosures are attractive targets for ad-tech data flows, since even anonymized or pseudonymous location and usage data can be cross-referenced to identify individuals. Sensitive health attributes shared this way cannot be meaningfully anonymized once they reach outside parties, which is part of why regulators have treated this category of data differently from ordinary browsing habits.
What happens next
Claimants who joined the UK action are expected to receive payments once the settlement funds are distributed following the scheduled payments. Austen Hays has said the case may prompt further claims from users who were not part of the original group, though no new UK filing has been announced as of this week.
