Dating app Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to settle a UK lawsuit brought by thousands of users who alleged that highly sensitive personal information, including HIV status in some cases, was shared with third parties without proper consent.
The settlement resolves a group action filed at the High Court of England and Wales over Grindr’s data practices before 2020. The company confirmed the agreement in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the settlement was reached on September 2 and involved no finding or admission of liability.
Under the agreement, Grindr will make two payments of £13 million. The first is due by December 31, 2026, while the second must be paid by March 31, 2027.
The legal action was originally filed in April 2024 and later served on Grindr in April 2025. Around 12,000 users eventually joined the action led by UK law firm Austen Hays, according to reports on the settlement.
The claimants accused Grindr of violating UK privacy laws by allowing third parties access to sensitive information during the period covered by the case. The allegations included the handling of users’ HIV status and other personal information.
Two data analytics companies, Apptimize and Localytics, were previously identified in connection with Grindr’s sharing of HIV-related information. The practice attracted scrutiny in 2018, after which Grindr said it would stop sharing HIV status with the companies.
Grindr disputes the allegations underlying the UK lawsuit and stressed that the settlement does not amount to an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
“While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period,” the company said in its SEC filing.
The company said the practices at issue occurred before 2020, when Grindr was owned and controlled by Chinese conglomerate Kunlun. Grindr was sold to new owners that year and became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange two years later.
The dispute forms part of a longer history of regulatory scrutiny surrounding the dating platform’s handling of personal information. Grindr has previously faced regulatory action in Europe over its privacy practices, including sanctions by Norway’s data protection authorities.
Since its change of ownership in 2020, Grindr says it has overhauled its privacy programme with greater emphasis on transparency, user control and the particular privacy requirements of its users.
The settlement brings the UK group action to an end without a court ruling on whether the allegations against Grindr were proven. The agreed £26 million will now be paid in the two instalments stretching through March 2027.
