Grindr to pay £26m to settle UK claim over alleged sharing of users’ HIV status
Nearly 12,000 UK users brought the case, which concerned Grindr's data practices before 2020. The company admits no liability but acknowledges a 'loss of trust'.
Grindr has agreed to pay £26m to settle a group action brought in England by users who alleged that the app shared their most sensitive personal information, in some cases their HIV status, with third parties. The company disclosed the settlement in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it had resolved the case on 2 September 2026.
It closes a chapter Grindr has been trying to put behind it since 2018, when researchers first raised the alarm about where users’ health information was going.
What the Grindr UK claim alleged
The proceedings were issued in the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024 and served on Grindr in April 2025, according to the filing. The claimants alleged breaches of UK privacy law through the sharing of sensitive personal data for commercial purposes.
Matrix Chambers, whose barristers acted for the claimants, says 11,999 people were part of the action. They were represented by the law firm Austen Hays, with a team led by Chaya Hanoomanjee, and by counsel Catrin Evans KC, Ian Helme and Catherine Arnold.
The case concerned what Grindr calls “historical data practices before 2020”. That is the period before May 2020, when the app’s former owner, Kunlun, sold it to San Vicente Acquisition, as The Hacker News reports.
How much Grindr will pay, and when
The £26m will be paid in two instalments of £13m each: the first by 31 December 2026 and the second by 31 March 2027. Grindr’s filing puts each instalment at roughly $17.6m at the exchange rate on 3 September.
Grindr’s response: no admission of liability
Grindr has not admitted wrongdoing. “The settlement includes no findings or admission of liability,” the company told the SEC. But its statement went further than the usual boilerplate: “While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users.”
The 2018 HIV data findings behind the case
The allegations trace back to February 2018, when the Norwegian research institute SINTEF, testing the app with Swedish broadcaster SVT, documented that Grindr was sending users’ HIV status and last-tested date to Apptimize and Localytics, two companies it used to optimise its apps. Grindr said at the time it would stop the practice, and insisted it had never sold personal user information.
Regulators followed. In 2021, Norway’s data protection authority fined Grindr under the GDPR for sharing users’ location, sexual orientation and mental health details with advertisers. The penalty was later cut to NOK 65m (about €5.5m), and in October 2025 the Norwegian Consumer Council, which brought the original complaint, reported that Grindr had lost its appeal. “Grindr’s practice of uncontrolled sharing of special category data with third parties is illegal,” said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the council’s director of digital policy.
Why the Grindr settlement matters for dating app privacy
Dating apps hold an unusually intimate mix of information: sexual orientation, health details, precise location, private messages. Under the UK GDPR, data about a person’s health, sex life and sexual orientation are all special category data, which carries extra protection. The Grindr settlement is a reminder that mishandling that information can be expensive long after the practice itself has stopped, and that group actions are a live route for users to seek redress.
For readers, the practical lessons are the familiar ones: check what a dating app says it shares in its privacy policy, think before adding health information to a public profile, and review app permissions such as location access. For how Grindr handles privacy today, see our Grindr review, and for the wider risks of dating online, our research on romance scam statistics.
Sources
- Grindr Inc. Form 8-K (US Securities and Exchange Commission, filed 4 September 2026)
- Grindr Agrees to Pay £26 Million to Settle UK Group Litigation (Matrix Chambers, 11 September 2026)
- Grindr to Pay £26 Million to Settle U.K. Claims Over HIV Status Data Sharing (The Hacker News, 8 September 2026)
- SINTEF Grindr privacy leaks findings (GitHub)
- Grindr loses appeal (Norwegian Consumer Council, 21 October 2025)
- What is special category data? (Information Commissioner’s Office)
