OSLO (Reuters – Norway’s Data Protection Authority (DPA), has reduced the fine for Grindr, a dating app that was illegally disclosing users data to advertisers to 65 million Norwegian crowns ($7.14million). Grindr said that it had made efforts to rectify its practice.

Grindr was originally fined 100 million crowns by the DPA in January. However, the DPA announced on Wednesday that the amount has been reduced due to new financial information and Grindr’s “reparations for the shortcomings in their consent-management platform”.

Grindr (based in the United States) said that it strongly disagreed with this decision.

Tobias Judin from the DPA’s International department stated that they concluded that Grindr disclosed user data for behavioural advertising without any legal basis.

The agency also called Datatilsynet concluded that consent from users collected by Grindr for the use private data in July 2018 to April 2020 was not valid.

“We strongly disagree with Datatilsynet’s reasoning, which concerns historical consent practices from years ago, not our current consent practices or Privacy Policy,” Grindr Chief Privacy Officer Shane Wiley said in a statement.

Grindr indicated that they were considering appeals to the decision.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Europe, sets guidelines to collect, process and share personal data within the European Union.

According to the Norwegian Consumer Council’s (NCC) watchdog, Grindr provided detailed user data to third parties engaged in profiling and advertising. This data consisted of details about IP addresses, GPS coordinates, age, and gender.

The NCC stated that in some instances, mass sharing personal data could lead to physical safety issues if the users are found and targeted in countries with homosexuality.

($1 = 9.1083 Norwegian crowns)