Grindr ‘loophole’ allows exact location to be pinpointed?
By Josh Haggis
A message has been sent to Grindr users warning that their exact location can apparently be pinpointed by other users of the gay dating app – right down to which room they are sitting in at home.
An anonymous user of the gay dating app has sent more than 100,000 messages to fellow Grindr users in over 70 countries with anti-gay laws, NDTV reports, informing them of the alleged flaw in the app’s technological make-up.
The app is only supposed to supply users with an approximate distance between themselves and each person with whom they are exchanging messages.
However, according to the anonymous user, who is believed to be acting altruistically, a user’s precise whereabouts can be found by querying Grindr’s servers from three different locations and “triangulating” the results.
Read an excerpt from the message below:
“I know officials at Grindr have been informed several times within the past months about these issues, which would seem to imply that the concept of “social responsibility” is lost upon Grindr. While you may live in a country where using Grindr is no big deal, there are countries like Sudan and Yemen where anti-gay laws have been enacted with severe consequences, e.g. the death penalty. Knowing that Grindr users in countries such as these are being put unnecessarily at a high risk should be reason enough for Grindr to change its system.”
Earlier this year, a report by Channel 4’s Dispatches revealed that hate groups in Russia have been using gay dating apps such as Grindr to “hunt down” gay men, before humiliating them in videos which are subsequently posted online. Read more abut the documentary here.