The U.S. government is forcing the Chinese owner of West Hollywood-based hook-up app Grindr to sell it off on grounds of national security.
In 2016, Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd. purchased a stake in Grindr for $93 million and two years later acquired full ownership of it. Recently, the owner has made comments about disliking gay men. Now, it’s been revealed that the app may be using personal information to blackmail users here and identify dissidents in China.
With nude photos, personal chats, HIV status and locations pinpointed to an exact location within feet, that information is tied to email addresses and other personal information that can be used to identify users.
While the U.S. government isn’t interested in whether someone in a gay bar on Cedar Springs Road is hooking up with someone else in that bar, it may be interested in whether the Chinese government is using the information on phones of U.S. military personnel to tip off that government about troop locations or movement.
And there’s no fix to the app. Letting other people know exactly where you are is the whole point of Grindr.
So Beijing Kunlun is seeking to sell Grindr. The company had been preparing for a public stock offering. According to Reuters, Kunlun is now planning to auction the division off. As of 2017, Reuters reports, the app had 27 million users.
— David Taffet
