LGBTQ dating app Grindr has been hit with a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court, accusing the company of allegedly violating an Illinois biometrics privacy law by scanning faces of people who upload their photos to the site as part of the ID verification process when signing up to use the app.
Named plaintiff, Jacob Flynn, identified as a resident of Illinois, accuses Grindr of unlawfully collecting, storing, and using users' biometric data.
According to the complaint, Flynn opened a Grindr account in 2020, at which time he uploaded a photo of himself to Grindr to verify his identity.
The complaint asserts Grindr scanned the photo at that time, and stored a template of his identifying facial geometry, without his knowledge or consent, and without providing notice. According to the complaint, this violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA.)
The complaint argues that the company's practices expose users to serious and irreversible privacy risks.
The lawsuit was filed Jan. 22 in Los Angeles federal court.
While filed under an Illinois law, the complaint asserts the lawsuit should be tried in California federal court because Grindr is headquartered in West Hollywood, and the alleged scans took place in California, no matter where Grindr users are located.
The lawsuit seeks to expand the action to include all Illinois residents whose faces were allegedly similarly scanned by Grindr in the past five years.
The lawsuit seeks damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation, plus attorney fees. Those damages could increase exponentially, however, as the Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the law to define individual violations as each time a person's biometric identifiers are scanned, not just the first scan. So, damages could be multiplied across thousands of Grindr users, whose facial geometry may have been scanned multiple times.
Plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Leah M. Beligan and Jerusalem F. Beligan, of Beligan Law Group, of Newport Beach; Michael L. Fradin, of Fradin Law, of Athens, Ohio; and James L. Simon, of Simon Law Co., of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.