The biggest shock may be that it didn’t happen sooner. Personal data is collected, sold and bought by a tangle of app developers, data brokers and advertising companies with little oversight. What stands out about this particular incident isn’t that it’s improbable, but that it’s the exact worst-case scenario privacy experts have been warning about for a long time. Conference of Catholic Bishops after a newsletter said it used his location data from the Grindr app to determine he was frequenting gay bars. This week, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill stepped down from his job as top administrator for the U.S. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, file)Ī Catholic priest allegedly downloaded a popular gay dating app onto his smartphone years ago, perhaps assuming it would keep his secret. The Norwegian Consumer Council said it found “serious privacy infringements” in its analysis of how shadowy online ad companies track and profile smartphone users. Dating apps including Grindr, OkCupid and Tinder leak personal information to advertising tech companies in possible violation of European data privacy laws, a Norwegian consumer group said in a report Tuesday, Jan. FILE - In this Wednesday, file photo, a woman checks the Grindr app on her mobile phone in Beirut, Lebanon.
