{"id":179272,"date":"2018-04-02T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/04\/02\/facebook-might-be-the-best-of-the-social-media-companies\/"},"modified":"2018-04-02T20:51:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T01:51:00","slug":"facebook-might-be-the-best-of-the-social-media-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/04\/02\/facebook-might-be-the-best-of-the-social-media-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Might Be the Best of the Social Media Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Case in point, LGBT dating site Grindr is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/azeenghorayshi\/grindr-hiv-status-privacy\">sharing the HIV status of its users with other companies<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users\u2019 HIV status to two other companies, BuzzFeed News has learned.<\/p>\n<p>The two companies \u2014 Apptimize and Localytics, which help optimize apps \u2014 receive some of the information that Grindr users choose to include in their profiles, including their HIV status and \u201clast tested date.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because the HIV information is sent together with users\u2019 GPS data, phone ID, and email, it could identify specific users and their HIV status, according to Antoine Pultier, a researcher at the Norwegian nonprofit <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/SINTEF-9012\/grindr-privacy-leaks\">SINTEF<\/a>, which first identified the issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe HIV status is linked to all the other information. That\u2019s the main issue,\u201d Pultier told BuzzFeed News. \u201cI think this is the incompetence of some developers that just send everything, including HIV status.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grindr was founded in 2009 and has been increasingly branding itself as the go-to app for healthy hookups and gay cultural content. In December, the company launched an online magazine dedicated to cultural issues in the queer community. The app offers free ads for HIV-testing sites, and last week, it debuted an optional feature that would remind users to get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/laurenstrapagiel\/grindr-reminder-hiv-testing\">tested for HIV<\/a> every three to six months.<\/p>\n<p>But the new analysis, confirmed by cybersecurity experts who analyzed <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/SINTEF-9012\/grindr-privacy-leaks\">SINTEF\u2019s data<\/a> and independently verified by BuzzFeed News, calls into question how seriously the company takes its users\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gee, you think?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cTo then have that data shared with third parties that you weren\u2019t explicitly notified about, and having that possibly threaten your health or safety \u2014 that is an extremely, extremely egregious breach of basic standards that we wouldn\u2019t expect from a company that likes to brand itself as a supporter of the queer community.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah pretty much.<\/p>\n<p>If you know anyone who used Grindr, you should warn them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Case in point, LGBT dating site Grindr is sharing the HIV status of its users with other companies: The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users\u2019 HIV status to two other companies, BuzzFeed News has learned. The two companies \u2014 Apptimize &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,364,367,436,366],"class_list":["post-179272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-evil","tag-internet","tag-lgbtq","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}