Grindr User Data Was Sold Through Ad Networks (gizmodo.com) 78
According to The Wall Street Journal, a digital advertising network was selling precise movements of millions of users of the gay-dating app Grindr. The locations were available for purchase since "at least 2017," according to the report. Gizmodo reports: According to the Journal's sources, one of the company's old ad partners, MoPub (which was sold off by Twitter earlier this year), was freely passing off location data from the tens of thousands of apps that use place-based information to monetize. At one time, this included Grindr. Once in MoPub's hands, the Journal alleges that this data was sold off, in bulk, to other partners, like Near (formerly known as UM, and formerly formerly known as UberMedia). And Near offered up that data to just about anyone. Because data privacy laws in the U.S. are vague and chaotic where they exist at all, Near can pawn off data from its upstream partners out in the open. You, dear reader, could buy it yourself.
"Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors, restricting the information we share to IP address, advertising ID, and the basic information necessary to support ad delivery," Grindr spokesperson Patrick Lenihan noted in a public statement. With all respect to Lenihan, that bar is extremely low. So-called "anonymous" data points like an ad ID or IP address can easily be tied back to a specific device, and the person who owns that device. By using "anonymous" data like this, advertisers can accurately surmise your workout routine, your favorite tunes, your immigration status and much, much more. "[A]bout one year ago, reports emerged that location data gleaned from the app was used to out a Catholic priest," adds Gizmodo. "The priest resigned, and Catholic news writers wrung their hands over the ill-gotten data source."
"[T]he data used to out the priest was anonymized, legally speaking, but the middlemen were able to tie the Grindr-using device to a certain Grindr-using priest because the device was seen frequenting the priest's residence and lake house."
"Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors, restricting the information we share to IP address, advertising ID, and the basic information necessary to support ad delivery," Grindr spokesperson Patrick Lenihan noted in a public statement. With all respect to Lenihan, that bar is extremely low. So-called "anonymous" data points like an ad ID or IP address can easily be tied back to a specific device, and the person who owns that device. By using "anonymous" data like this, advertisers can accurately surmise your workout routine, your favorite tunes, your immigration status and much, much more. "[A]bout one year ago, reports emerged that location data gleaned from the app was used to out a Catholic priest," adds Gizmodo. "The priest resigned, and Catholic news writers wrung their hands over the ill-gotten data source."
"[T]he data used to out the priest was anonymized, legally speaking, but the middlemen were able to tie the Grindr-using device to a certain Grindr-using priest because the device was seen frequenting the priest's residence and lake house."
Dump the DC data (Score:1, Interesting)
Let’s see how many good christian anti abortion “family” men are out there having gay hookups.
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And the politicians! And anybody else who holds public office!
Or... maybe we can try and create a world where people's privacy isn't something to be stolen then traded to the highest bidder.
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Liberals never cheat on their significant others.. (Score:2)
Everyone messes up some of the time. Are you perfect?
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Let’s see how many good christian anti abortion “family” men are out there having gay hookups.
Probably less than you'd think. There's no good reason to be sneaking around like it's still the previous century. Hell, even that scumbag Peter Peter Thiel has a husband. The politicians trying to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights, and the voters that support them, are by-and-large the typical heterosexuals.
The straight cheating is probably taking place on good ol' Tinder, or whatever hookup app straight folks use these days.
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If outing the "good christian anti abortion family men" is the cost of outing all closeted gays, most Leftists would be willing to throw all gays under the bus in order to flog a few hypocrites. While the Church would forgive the indiscretions, I'm sure there's quite a few Leftists out there who would neither forgive churchgoing homosexuals, nor let anyone forget it.
What the Left doesn't understand about Christianity is that even though we consider homosexuality a sin, we'll forgive you should you lose
Warning signs (Score:3)
"[T]he data used to out the priest was anonymized, legally speaking, but the middlemen were able to tie the Grindr-using device to a certain Grindr-using priest because the device was seen frequenting the priest's residence and lake house."
That motherfucker was never going to get into heaven like that. It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a priest with a lake house to get into the kingdom of god.
Re: Warning signs (Score:1, Flamebait)
It's disturbing that Christians pack megachurches by the thousands and should know this continue to do so knowing their "pastor" also owns yachts and multimillion dollar mansions bought with church funds.
So much blatant hypocracy that makes the movie "Idiocracy" look more and more like a documentary.
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From what I have observed, Evangelicals believe that God wants us to be rich, even if Jesus said some shit to the contrary.
I don't think this can be overstated. It's super convenient for them to fool people into believing that wealth is a direct blessing, because it gives them more authority.
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Reminds me of this Genesis video https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show?
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If Jesus were alive today? Guarantee he would come out on TV looking poor as shit, robes, dirty feet, scraggly hair, the works. Then he'd go backstage after, have twelve virgin girls bath him, take one of them on the backstage alter and have her sent off to play whore for his friends, then suit up, rolex up, then be chauffered off in a stretched Cadillac Escalade doing blow out of hookers' asses while being blown by some trained professionals that had either already been porn stars, or were about to be.
It's
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He’d be labeled a woke commie leftist for doing things like taking care of the sick, giving money to the poor, showing compassion towards people
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Adherents to prosperity gospel (I am not) don't find it hypothetical is the thing. They believe in what they doing. The question who is a 'Christian' is really a somewhat tricky one.
A simplistic definition is 'anyone who follows Jesus' but than you gotta ask well how badly does someone get to be misinformed, or to misinterpret his message before they are kicked out of the club? You can't actually make to many hard fast rules because - well forgiveness and grace and all that. You don't have a single author
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It's disturbing to me that you call those who pack megachurches Christians, even though you (an unbeliever!) can identify their immoral choices. If you think they don't represent Christ, or act like Christ, or even love Christ, why call them Christians?
Granted, I can't blame you for not knowing Christian theology, but if you did you'd surely know the Bible versus which talk about lovers of money, lovers of themselves, etc... If you'd read Paul's letters, you'd know the verses pertaining to those false
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2.) identify the faults in one's self, and even more difficult to 3.) actually correct one's own faults.
Granted, it can be very hard to see through the bullshit that is christianity once you're indoctrinated. But keep at it and you will hopefully find the fault before you depart from reality.
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I find that most people who object to Christianity don't object to what it actually teaches, but what they think it teaches.
Perhaps you could share the fault so we both could be enlightened?
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In my opinion the primary fault in christianity is that they believe in an imaginary entity. What's more, they think only their imaginary entity is real. That's because their imaginary entity told so in a book. Their imaginary entity is jealous and vengeful. Some think that all the imaginary entities are actually the same imaginary entity. But these people still think that the form that is known in their religion is the preferred, true form.
A hoist of secondary flaws are connected to that, like the belief t
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How do you know the entity is imaginary?
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How do you know the entity is imaginary?
Because there is zero evidence that it's there.
I might just as well ask you how you'd know the pink elephant living on my ceiling is imaginary.
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I've left camping sites with zero evidence I was there. The notion that something doesn't exist because you can't find evidence of it is absurd - the practical implication of such a notion would make modern biology a religion rather than a science.
Think of it this way - even fishermen who have never caught a largemouth bass believe they exist. Why? Because others, whom they trust, have observed largemouth bass.
The observation of God is something common to all literate civilizations (and even some il
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Think of it this way - even fishermen who have never caught a largemouth bass believe they exist. Why? Because others, whom they trust, have observed largemouth bass.
But there is plenty of evidence of the existence of largemouth bass. Don't try to weaken the madness that is religion. There is absolutely no proof of the imaginary entity that is central in those movements.
The observation of God is something common to all literate civilizations
Except none of those agree on it. Or do you bathe in the glory of Thor? Marduk maybe? Shiva? Chaak?
Also, for most known religions it is gods, so plural. Monotheism is a relatively recent innovation.
There is no rational or scientific explanation for how this would have occurred absent an actual deity.
LOL. That's just plain bullshit. There are plenty of reasons for humans to develop religion and for evoluti
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I think you would benefit from reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. In it, Dawkins' asserts, but cannot prove, that the question of God's existence can be treated as a scientific hypothesis, and then goes on to make many arguments which aren't falsifiable.
One of the more egregious examples is his treatment of religion. The best he can come up with is that God's existence is unlikely, and he speculates that religion is an artifact of something else... but he can't specify that something else to th
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The fact that I cannot explain love in scientific terms doesn't mean that love doesn't exist,
But love is pretty explainable from an evolutionary point of view. Unless you're talking about the qualia of feeling love. But that has very little to do with religion.
In the case of God, those people happen to be religious, and happen to have written down their observations.
Yeah, like talking to a burning bush or seeing god in the clouds.
The notion that there exists a good, sentient, supernatural being in the universe is consistent across almost all cultures throughout history.
Bullshit. Most cultures don't have this notion of a good sentient supernatural being. Like i explained, most religions that we know of simply assign personality to natural phenomena. The 'all powerful yet unacting supernatural being' thing is pretty recent. Also, there is no pro
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Not necessarily a very valuable lake house (Score:2)
Why assume it's worth a lot? And it could well be shared with the rest of his family, especially as his days off won't be at the weekend!
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That motherfucker was never going to get into heaven like that. It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a priest with a lake house to get into the kingdom of god.
In certain contexts, a "priest" is just a specialized type of salesman that uses highly theatrical routines to sell structured hot air. In fact, that seems to be the usual case, although I will not rule out some smoke their own product and actually believe what they sell.
User Data (Score:1)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. (Score:2)
I really pity people who are either too stupid or too naive to have seen this coming. The ones I warned directly though, years ago, who simply didn't believe me, who even called me paranoid and a zealot... them I'm infuriated with, because they're part of the problem. Granted, there's no moral high-ground for people using this app, especially this oath-breaking priest, but this type of life-destroying privacy violation isn't isolated to Grindr, and is also happening regularly through services that are consi
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this type of life-destroying privacy violation isn't isolated to Grindr, and is also happening regularly through services that are considered trustworthy and to people for whom any of you would advocate.
Or just don't associate with people who have that kind of power over your happiness, if you want to have gay sex and/or (a) relationship(s). The problem here isn't the app. Every app on my phone could shout from the rooftops that I'm gay and it would make no difference whatsoever in my life.
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You're missing the point. This information harvesting isn't just being misused against gay people. This information harvesting is also being misused against victims of abuse - people hiding from rapist parents/spouses and murderous stalkers, that sort of thing. Even police informants under supposed identity protection aren't safe.
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(And incidentally: "This doesn't affect me so there isn't really a problem." is exactly the type of "part of the problem" attitude I was talking about.)
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(And incidentally: "This doesn't affect me so there isn't really a problem." is exactly the type of "part of the problem" attitude I was talking about.)
If it means these type of people (referring specifically to self-loathing gays) need to either come out or keep it in their pants, the lack of privacy is a feature as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a visible member of the LGBTQ+ community so scumbags like him can get their freak on and then pretend to be a celibate heterosexual in front of their homophobic congregation every Sunday.
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You know, there is a reason Europe now has the GDPR. There are a lot of people that saw things like this coming.
discipline (Score:4, Insightful)
The proposal was to provide this information privately to Church officials in the hopes that they would discipline or remove those found to be using these technologies
We could also just not "discipline" people being who they are
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Yeah no kidding, a priest being gay with other adults should hardly be the pressing issue to the Church when there are still, let's just say issues they have not even come close to cleaning their own house.
Also just let the priests get married, be gay, whatever. They're still just people. Making them follow abstinence is just really weird and has bad outcomes for everybody.
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Those issues almost all involve celibacy fails by gay priests.
The person responsible for coordinating the US bishops response? The grinder priest.
Nobody is forced to take a vow of celibacy. But if you do, you should take it seriously.
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Being gay and being sexually attracted to kids are not related, that idea is practically urban legend at this point. It's a separate thing from hetero/homo sexuality.
I am sure lot's of priests do take it seriously when they are in the seminary in their early 20's, but as we have seen the outcomes of that are less than stellar as well as there being less priests than ever.
It's not even in the gospels, it's an arbitrary rule. The protestants have their issues for sure but I think letting their clergy get mar
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Being gay and being sexually attracted to kids are not related...
Almost all the issues involved teenagers--- often older teenagers: pedophilia is not relevant.
It [celibacy] is not even in the gospels, it's an arbitrary rule.
You mean aside from Matt 19:12? Paul wrote at some length, approvingly referring to optional celibacy as "not to restrict you but rather to promote effective and consistent service to the Lord without distraction".
The practice of having only celibates as priests in the Roman rite is historically contingent, but it is not without a long and mostly successful track record.
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Majority of victims are 11-14 (including most of the 2002 Boston Globe case victims) so "teenagers" is a bit of a stretch.
The eunuch thing? Isn't that more about divorce that priesthood? I think that is also a stretch. And so because Paul "suggested it" it's the law of the land forever and ever? Can't imagine why the Church is at it's lowest level of participation ever. The history of enforced celibacy does not really tie it's roots strongly to biblical origin, especially not gospel origin.
Define the me
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Nobody is forced to take a vow of celibacy. But if you do, you should take it seriously.
Actually, this is one where basically nobody can give informed consent. Because it requires significant life-experience to understand what this means. Hence this is basically an "experienced experts only" product that must not be sold to the general public.
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I've heard priests describe their profession as their calling. If you are prone to believing that sort of thing then presumably they don't see it as a choice, at least not in the regular sense.
Ah, yes. People in reduced rational states making important choices. No surprise this badly backfires regularly.
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Yeah no kidding, a priest being gay with other adults should hardly be the pressing issue to the Church when there are still, let's just say issues they have not even come close to cleaning their own house.
The religious right isn't even content to live-and-let-live when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues outside of their church. It'd be almost like expecting the KKK to start admitting black members. Keeping the church from using their influence to turn back the clock on hard-fought LGBTQ+ rights is difficult enough as it is, even without threatening to muck about in their affairs.
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Yeah no kidding, a priest being gay with other adults should hardly be the pressing issue to the Church when there are still, let's just say issues they have not even come close to cleaning their own house.
Also just let the priests get married, be gay, whatever. They're still just people. Making them follow abstinence is just really weird and has bad outcomes for everybody.
Indeed. Like for a rather large number of altar-boys, for example. Enforcing strong unnatural rules always just means somebody suffers without any sane reason. Makes me question whether religions that do this have a strong sadist streak. Come to think of it, that is almost certainly the case. "Purity" through suffering and sacrifice and all that insane crap.
If I were religious, I would probably think that the trickster has long since taken over. Instead, it is just crappy humans doing crappy things to other
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The proposal was to provide this information privately to Church officials in the hopes that they would discipline or remove those found to be using these technologies
We could also just not "discipline" people being who they are
Setting aside for a moment the very modern notion that this is an identity instead of a behavior ... why should an organization not get to decide what its own membership criteria are?
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Identity vs behavior is the heart of it.
These religious organizations act as if they were an identity that trumps all others. If so, they should tread more lightly on their adherents. Either that or admit they are a behavior and then I'd have more sympathy with Tupper's point of view.
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Setting aside for a moment the very modern notion that this is an identity instead of a behavior ... why should an organization not get to decide what its own membership criteria are?
Simple: When these criteria are not something that is really clear in its real implications to the prospective members. "Informed consent" and all that.
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Setting aside for a moment the very modern notion that this is an identity instead of a behavior
This is a false dichotomy. Behavior is driven by identity.
Gay people do gay things for a reason.
Being celibate is part of the job description (Score:2)
This isn't particularly about his being gay, it's that he's not living the lifestyle he's signed up to and on the basis of which his parishioners pay him. If you choose to be a Roman Catholic priest, this is part of the deal.
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The proposal was to provide this information privately to Church officials in the hopes that they would discipline or remove those found to be using these technologies
We could also just not "discipline" people being who they are
That is not the religious way. After all, you have to employ fear and promise (immaterial) things to get followers and you have to have bizarre rituals and strong prohibitions that make no sense. I mean forbidding people to be gay does not even make sense with regards to growing the flock. It is just some artificially created "sin" that allows you to get the 10% under control that you cannot trap and guilt-trip with family and marriage.
Way to miss the point (Score:3, Insightful)
I get it now. Privacy violations aren't worth talking about if it embarasses one if those God-bothered Christers, amirite? Seriously, every single comment ignores the actual subject and focuses exclusively on what is essentially an irrelevant footnote.
By the way, a lot of you are conflating sects. Catholics are neither Christian nor Evangelical.
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Au contrarire, mon frere. Catholics are most definitely Christians [catholicleague.org]. They are just a different version of Christians.
Theologically speaking, then, Catholics are Christians, but sociologically speaking, they most certainly are not. For the purpose of this analysis, it is the sociological reality that is operative.
Parsing words and meanings doesn't get them off the hook.
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You could argue that the so-called Christian Church hasn't really followed the teachings of Christ since it became the state religion of the Roman Empire. At that point, it just became a rebranding of the Roman Imperial Cult. By that definition, the Church as a whole hasn't been Christian for a long time.
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I think you seem a little obsessed with sects, frankly.
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It's all about sects and violins...
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By the way, a lot of you are conflating sects. Catholics are neither Christian nor Evangelical.
Seriously, Catholics defined [pennbookcenter.com] the Bible as it is today, with just a few small reformations following, and basically all of modern Christianity has inherited from these decisions.
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Uhhh, Catholics are the original Christians. Martin Luther then split off and started the protestants. Catholics are very pro-science, believe in evolution, the big band (discovered by a priest).
Most of the anti science "christians" are born agains, baptists, and other biggoted christian sects, but not Catholics. For some reason they consider Catholics not real Christians.
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Catholics are very pro-science, believe in evolution, the big band (discovered by a priest).
I believe there was also a Monk involved (Thelonius).
Jazz history 101, really.
uBlock Origin (Score:2)
If you're still abstaining from using uBlock Origin, you're implicitly opting into this kind of thing (since you have selected web browsers' bizarre default behavior of loading every resource that a web page references, and in the case of javascript, even executing it!).
And people knew this in 2017 too. Even back then, users opting to load ads was considered a strange and reckless decision.
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uBlock Origin works great with Firefox. Why would phones be an oddball exception?
Geez, forget all the usual security reasons. If anything, the tiny screens of phones make ad blocking particularly necessary from a basic usability viewpoint. How the hell does anyone get by not doing that? Using a phone with ads sounds like an exercise in masochism.
Um, not that there's anything wrong with that. If joe blow wants to see browse grindr looking for S&M partners, that's fine, but for fuck's sake, there's no r
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Grindr is an app, not a website. It cannot be used through a web browser, so such tricks will not work, unfortunately.
For those who don't know (Score:5, Informative)
Grindr operates by showing users the closest 100 users. That might mean 80% of the occupants of a nightclub or rural truck stop, but it might also mean that the nearest "local" user could be a half hour drive away. It's tracking that information in real time while someone is using the app and it offers accuracy down to around 3m. Precise locations are a huge thing for Grindr and that's an absolute treasure trove of habits for a lucrative (i.e. generally childless, single adults) and self-selecting group of people. Grindr more or less doesn't work unless it's collecting accurate location information, and the benefit to using it (hot and cold running hook ups that are extremely likely to end in sex) are such that almost anyone who installs it isn't going to be terribly worried about what the app is doing with their data.
It's very hard to argue that Grindr doesn't live up to the value it's offering its users. I've been out with friends who have been able to get laid in places like Amusement Parks and shopping malls; this isn't a case where the privacy conscious tech nerd's toolbox of data collection firewalls would've helped. This is always what Grindr was going to do and the carrot on the end of it all is getting laid, it's making the best possible case for letting it happen.
Of course it is... (Score:2)
...because haven't we been insisting for decades that gay people are just, well, normal people?
So why wouldn't their data get whored out like the rest of ours?
On a tangential note, anyone else curious how a PRIEST can afford a vacation lake home?
I guess the Dominicans didn't make much headway then.
'Lake house' may not be of much value (Score:2)
And could well be shared with the rest of his family, especially as his days off won't be at the weekend!
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In a really bizarre sense, you could say that Grindr is supporting Gay rights here....