Does Grindr & apps have a right sell and tell gay data to the Church or Government?

[BootmanLA]

On 3/28/2023 at 12:40 PM, akula said:

Fucking hypocrits check this article out.

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.salon.com/2013/03/12/the_vatican_plays_landlord_to_europes_biggest_gay_bathhouse/

It's a ten-year old article. My guess is that if the church didn't get rid of its bathhouse tenant quickly, it's because some sort of eviction-control laws in Italy/the EU prohibit them from doing so.

I have as many problems with the Catholic Church as anyone, but I doubt sincerely they bought this building with the idea of continuing to lease part of it to a gay bathhouse. 

[chipygmalion80]

On 3/19/2023 at 1:12 AM, rPup said:

The constitution of California does protect the right to privacy, and this sort of activity is illegal under the CPRA if the user has opted out.

We'll see soon enough.

The latest case is the Santa Clara Heath Dept spying on churchgoers.  The law about freedom of religion was used instead of right to privacy.

In that case, the County hired SafeGraph to geolocate the # of attendees at the church during COVID.  Perhaps the Cali law should have stopped the County, but time and again ethics fly out the window when folks get ahold of datasets.  This guys interpretation of the tech is spot on -- if SafeGraph knew locations of attendees, they can track back to a person's home  [think before following links] https://davidzweig.substack.com/p/when-a-renegade-church-and-a-zealous

The Vatican doing this crap is just a red herring.  It's news meant to make people mad for the wrong reasons.

When government agencies that aren't even supposed to act as law enforcement can spy on our exact locations WITHOUT a search warrant or, even worse, a secret Patriot Act court signing off on a wiretap, the Vatican knowing who went to a bathhouse will be the least of my worries.

[BergenGuy]

On 3/11/2023 at 5:08 PM, brnbk said:

but selling gay priests' data to the US church - and government as there is a new found brotherhood between the US Evangelicals and Catholics, is a new low. 

Too much data is being collected, and too much of it is too easily sold for purposes that no one could have imagined.  This is a perfect example of that.  Grindr didn't sell any data to the Catholic Church and it didn't single out data concerning just priests.  It sold a huge dataset to a data broker, who then sold it to this "non-profit" group that used sophisticated data-mining techniques to identify the priests out of hundreds of thousands of users in that dataset.  Grindr should be condemned for selling that data in the first place, but it didn't set out to deliberately expose gay priests.

[CoolestDude]

On 3/12/2023 at 7:16 PM, BootmanLA said:

To clarify a bit about this story:

. . . .

As ErosWired noted, this is perfectly legal in the United States because when you sign up for most apps and services, the Terms of Service spell out that you give the company permission to use the data generated by your usage however they see fit. In some jurisdictions like the European Union, those TOS cannot supersede established legal privacy rights; but in the United States, users have virtually no such rights, with some very limited exceptions (like payment methods - credit card numbers and the like). And even if the company initially says it won't use X or Y or Z data, or it will only use A or B or C data, the TOS almost always gives the company the right to change that policy with little or no warning, other than a message that says the TOS has changed, click here to read the new version (and no one ever does because it's tens of pages of legal jargon).

Now, that doesn't make it morally right to do - but then morals are famously in the eye of the beholder. 

This isn't entirely true. Grindr is contractually bound by its privacy policy and that policy would not permit it to sell or disclose an individual's data, except as expressly provided in the policy. And that policy wouldn't permit this type of data sale, and wouldn't disclose data to the government without a subpoena. Thus, any individuals whose data was disclosed in violation of the policy has a legal cause of action against Grindr. However, it would have to be their personally identifiable data - I'm not sure exactly what was sold. It would not violate the policy to sell certain types of meta-data, for example. 

Here's what the current privacy policy says: " We may access, preserve and disclose Personal Information to investigate, prevent, or take action in connection with: (i) enforcement of the Grindr Terms and Conditions of Service; (ii) claims that any content or behavior violates our policies or the rights of third-parties; (iii) requests for customer service; (iv) technical issues; (v) protecting the rights, property or personal safety of Grindr, its users or the public; (vi) lawful legal requests including subpoenas, warrants, or court orders or in connection with any legal process; (vii) establishing or exercising our legal rights or defending against legal claims; (viii) tax and accounting purposes; or (ix) as otherwise required by law, collectively 'Legal Obligations'."

 

[BootmanLA]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:44 AM, CoolestDude said:

This isn't entirely true. Grindr is contractually bound by its privacy policy and that policy would not permit it to sell or disclose an individual's data, except as expressly provided in the policy. And that policy wouldn't permit this type of data sale, and wouldn't disclose data to the government without a subpoena. Thus, any individuals whose data was disclosed in violation of the policy has a legal cause of action against Grindr. However, it would have to be their personally identifiable data - I'm not sure exactly what was sold. It would not violate the policy to sell certain types of meta-data, for example. 

Here's what the current privacy policy says: " We may access, preserve and disclose Personal Information to investigate, prevent, or take action in connection with: (i) enforcement of the Grindr Terms and Conditions of Service; (ii) claims that any content or behavior violates our policies or the rights of third-parties; (iii) requests for customer service; (iv) technical issues; (v) protecting the rights, property or personal safety of Grindr, its users or the public; (vi) lawful legal requests including subpoenas, warrants, or court orders or in connection with any legal process; (vii) establishing or exercising our legal rights or defending against legal claims; (viii) tax and accounting purposes; or (ix) as otherwise required by law, collectively 'Legal Obligations'."

But, as I pointed out, virtually every company with a Terms of service agreement reserves the right therein to change the Terms as needed, with your continuing use of the service as acknowledgment that you accept the changes. At most, some places require that users get a notification that the terms have changed; but that obligation only extends to notifying you that there's a change, not necessarily what the change is.

So if Grindr (or anyone else) says "Our privacy policy is X" and then the powers-that-be at Grindr decide they want the policy to be X-1, reducing the privacy guarantee, all they have to do is change the policy, and at most, notify you that there is a change, which you can review at your leisure (and which no one will do).

Moreover, there are almost always loopholes written into the Terms of Service that allow the company issuing them to make significant exceptions under a range of circumstances - complying with discovery demands or subpoenas, for instance. 

[brnbk]

I would love to contribute 😈to this very important discussion😶‍🌫️, but unfortunately the Warning that I received from this site was that I was spreading conspiracy theories👾 when I alleged that Grindr sold info. to right wing catholic groups which used it to collect and oust gay priests especially the  Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill in mid 2021. 

I got this info. from reputable US newspapers, the Catholic media and the US gay online magazines.

 

[think before following links] https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/21/catholic-official-grindr-reaction/

[think before following links] https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/06/15/opinion-jeffrey-burrills-rehabilitation-compounds-the-original-scandal-of-his-sin/

[think before following links] https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2021/7/24/catholic-priest-may-be-gay-isnt-cause-sadness

 

I do not remember the exact words of the warning as I have this character flaw of quickly forgetting unpleasant things, and I tried looking for it on the site but cannot find it. If anyone knows how to find a previous Warning, please feel free to message me. 

 

[viking8x6]

22 hours ago, brnbk said:

...unfortunately the Warning that I received from this site was that I was spreading conspiracy theories👾 when I alleged that Grindr sold info. to right wing catholic groups which used it to collect and oust gay priests especially the  Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill in mid 2021...

I do not remember the exact words of the warning as I have this character flaw of quickly forgetting unpleasant things, and I tried looking for it on the site but cannot find it. If anyone knows how to find a previous Warning, please feel free to message me.

You have only received one warning on the site to date, and that one was entirely pro forma, as it was given with zero points and no penalty whatsoever. It had nothing whatsoever to do with right wing Catholic groups or gay priests.

Thank you for citing your sources. That is a good practice any time, but especially when you are making a claim that could be controversial.