An advertising company now owned by Microsoft has been hit with Norway’s largest-ever privacy fine for passing along sensitive data from users of a dating app built for the LGBTQ+ community.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority says it has fined Xandr about $9.6 million for processing and sharing the personal data of Grindr users without a legal basis.
Says Line Coll, director general of the regulator,
“We issued such a high fine in this case because the breaches we identified were very serious. Thousands of users in Norway have been subjected to unlawful sharing of their sensitive data.”
From July of 2018 to April of 2020, Xandr took part in real-time ad bidding on both the buyer and seller side, relaying Grindr users’ data, including details revealing their sexual orientation, to potentially thousands of companies.
Advertisers could then bid against each other to show those users targeted ads.
Grindr is a location-based dating app aimed at gay, bi, trans and queer people.
The regulator rejected Xandr’s defense that it believed Grindr had already collected consent, finding the two companies were joint controllers of the data.
Says Coll,
“Xandr omitted to verify that the consents from Grindr were valid, and did not do anything to ensure they had a legal basis for their own processing.”
The authority says the direct financial benefit Xandr gained and the nearly two-year length of the practice pushed the penalty higher, and that the fine was based on Xandr’s own annual turnover rather than Microsoft’s.
A Microsoft spokesperson tells BleepingComputer the case covers conduct from before Microsoft acquired Xandr and that the company is reviewing the decision and assessing its options.
Xandr, now part of Microsoft, has three weeks to appeal.
The case began in 2020 with a complaint from the Norwegian Consumer Council.
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The post Microsoft-Owned Ad Firm Hit With Norway’s Biggest-Ever Privacy Fine for Sharing Grindr Users’ Sexual Orientation Data appeared first on The Daily Hodl.