Grindr’s Dedication to Transparency

I’m proud to announce the launch of Grindr’s updated Privacy Policy today. To be fair, not much has changed from a content perspective, but we did significantly reformat our approach to improve readability, add a few details, and harmonize the privacy options for all users globally. We go to great lengths to be transparent with our users (and those who are curious), and this is an extension of our dedication to that philosophy. Above all, we want our users to understand what information we are collecting and how we may be using it in our quest to provide them the best service possible.

If you were ever curious or a policy wonk like me, you’ve likely read a portion of a privacy policy here or there because you wanted to know how that company managed your information. Was it easy for you to find what you were looking for? Was it a quick read? Did you read it in its entirety? Did you learn how long they retained your data, what rights were provided to you with respect to your data, and who they may share your data with? In many cases, the answer is probably no. Our Privacy Policy update is intended to help make things easier for you—easier to read, easier to understand, and easier to learn more about topics of your particular interest.

We had several goals for this Privacy Policy revision:

Reduce the main Privacy Policy to a more consumable size (5 pages!) yet still cover the full breadth of our data collection and use practices
Globalize our approach to privacy by providing more helpful disclosures and privacy tools irrespective of the user’s jurisdiction
Provide a new “layer” of detail on core privacy topics like our retention policy and what information we may share with partners

Why “layers”? We’ve embraced a two-layered approach to our Privacy Policy to give users a more consumable top layer—the core Privacy Policy itself, now at only five pages. Five pages is still a good amount, but it’s readable in about 5 mins. And for those who want more specifics on a particular topic, we include a more detailed second layer.

Most privacy policies in the world today take a legal jurisdiction approach to their disclosures and may limit what privacy choices or tools they make available to their customers in different regions of the world. Grindr is committed to the privacy rights of all our users, regardless of their location on the planet. We still make some call-outs for items that are required by law in the EU under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or in Cali under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), but all of our core disclosures and privacy options are provided to all of our users across the globe.

What’s in a layer? I encourage you to give our updated Privacy Policy a test drive at privacy.grindr.com. Once you’re there you’ll see a list of topics. After you’ve read the full five pages of the core Privacy Policy, you can pick a topic to dive deeper on—for example, data retention. Were you aware that in many cases we only retain user data for seven days or less, and we only store chat history for 48 hours? I also encourage you to jump into our Third Party Partner page, where you’ll see that we give full visibility to all of our ad partners and other types of partners with links to their Privacy Policies. Of course, as Chief Privacy Officer I encourage you to read every topic in the list. But even if you only read the first layer, you’ll have a very good grasp on what happens with your data.

While we’re talking privacy, Apple iOS users should know that we also launched our Apple App Store Privacy Disclosure today. The disclosure lists the data types we collect, and while none of it should be surprising, casual users might lift an eyebrow when they see disclosures like the collection of Financial Information (in some of our user surveys we ask for annual salary range) or Health Information (our users are optionally able to provide their HIV status to other users). And to set the record straight, the only data type from Apple’s list that we share with ad partners for tracking purposes is the user’s Device ID—no information about the user’s Grindr account is shared, despite some in the media saying otherwise.

I hope our users see this new Privacy Policy as a step forward in making Grindr’s data collection and use practices easier to understand and continuing our dedication to providing transparency to what happens behind the scenes of our services.

Stay tuned for more privacy related blogging to come in the near future, and please don’t be afraid to ask questions. We’re easy to get ahold of at [email protected] and will do our best to get answers back to you in a timely manner.

Happy Holidays,

Shane Wiley, Chief Privacy Officer | LinkedIn