UPDATED Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million ($35.1 million) to settle a UK class action alleging that it shared users' personal data, including information about their HIV status, with third parties. Grindr is a location-based dating and social networking app primarily aimed at gay and bisexual men, transgender people, and the wider queer community. According to Grindr's Form 8-K filing, the company will make two £13 million installments, due by December 31, 2026, and March 31, 2027. The settlement includes no finding or admission of liability. The claim was issued in England's High Court in April 2024 by law firm Austen Hays and served on Grindr in April 2025. The claim drew on research published by SINTEF in 2018 concerning Grindr's sharing of user data with third-party analytics companies Localytics and Apptimize. According to the research, the information shared included users' HIV status and last test date, sexual orientation, and GPS location. Austen Hays told The Register at the time that the sharing could allow "a potentially unlimited number of third parties" to target or customize advertising to Grindr users. The lawsuit alleged that Grindr violated UK data protection law and that the allegedly illegal data sharing took place before April 3, 2018, and between May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020. "While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period," the company's 8-K stated. In its regulatory filing, Grindr said the challenged practices dated from before 2020, when the company was owned and controlled by Chinese company Kunlun and before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) forced Kunlun to sell the app [PDF]. The company said that since 2020, it has "overhauled its privacy program with a keen focus on the unique needs of its community." "Grindr is and remains a safe space for users, committed to transparency, user control, and responsible data practices," it added. The UK settlement is roughly five times the dollar value of the Norwegian fine Grindr spent years unsuccessfully challenging. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority imposed a 65 million kroner ($6.9 million) fine in December 2021 for violations of the GDPR. That case did not concern the disclosure of users' HIV status, but regulators found that identifying someone as a Grindr user constituted special category data concerning their sexual orientation or sex life. They also found that Grindr had shared personal data with advertising partners without valid consent. The information included users' GPS locations, IP addresses, advertising IDs, ages and genders, as well as the fact that they used Grindr. Norway's Privacy Appeals Board upheld the fine in September 2023. Grindr then challenged that decision in court, losing in Oslo District Court in 2024 and again before the Borgarting Court of Appeal in October 2025. ® Updated to add on September 9, 2026: Austen Hays told The Reg: “As Grindr disclosed on 4 September, it has settled the claims brought by our clients in respect of violations of UK privacy laws. While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period. “We thank our clients for trusting us with this sensitive case.” Grindr declined to comment further
Australia’s government will introduce legislation that tries to regulate digital services and impose a “digital duty of care.” “For too long, tech companies have been running real-time, unregulated product testing on Australians,” Minister for Communications Anika Wells said today. “In the same way that we have safety standards for cars, for food, and for appliances, Australia is getting basic safety standards for the online tools and online services,” she added. “Tech companies will still be allowed to move fast, but they will not be able to break things.” Meta, in its early years when still known as Facebook, used the term “Move fast and break things” to describe its internal processes for creating and updating its services. The premise of Australia’s plans is that Meta, and other digital platforms, broke far more than they intended in pursuit of profit. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed the planned digital duty of care as a successor to the law that means social media companies are not allowed to provide accounts to children aged under 16. “We would no longer let Australian children be treated as commodities,” he said. “We have the opportunity to shape tech for the better, rather than have it shape us.” The proposed law aims to shape tech by requiring social media companies to give Australian users the chance to determine what they see in their feeds. Some in Australia have criticized the planned law as government censorship. Albanese tried to counter that notion by summarizing the intent of the plan as “My feed, my way.” “This is not about giving government control,” Albanese said. “It is about giving people control.” Wells explained those controls would be implemented with a requirement for digital platforms of offer Australian users the chance to opt into a user experience that only shows content from accounts they already follow online. She said users will be able to opt back into an algorithmic feed and change their minds about what they want to see as often as they like. However, the law will also mean the relevant minister can seek a vote to ban certain content. Albanese said the draft bill seeks to do that for content that glorifies crime, promotes terrorism, pertains to eating disorders, pornography, sexual violence, and misogyny. Wells explained that the process of declaring content harmful would start with the relevant minister consulting with Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner, who will be able to recommend that certain types of content be declared harmful. That recommendation would be subject to a parliamentary vote before coming into force. She also suggested the laws on harmful content would cover AI services, mentioning the example of a chatbot advising a young user how to survive on 600 calories a day as a possible trigger for eating disorders and therefore providing a foreseeably harmful service. Wells also mentioned the "nudify" function available in Elon Musk's Grok AI service earlier this year, which could turn photos of people into nudes, because Australian law did not offer a mechanism to regulate it. This planned law will mean Australia's government can act when future services offer harmful functions. Finding precedents in a bottle The use of the term “digital duty of care” is a reference to one of the foundational cases in the law of torts – 1932’s Donoghue v Stevenson, which concerns a woman who poured a bottle of ginger beer over ice cream and watched in horror as a decomposed snail slid into her snack. Donoghue later suffered a bout of gastro-enteritis. The landmark case found that the maker of the ginger beer – and any other provider of goods and services – has a responsibility to avoid any foreseeable harms caused by their acts or omissions. The case made the concept of a duty of care central to the law of torts, which cover civil harms. Australia naming its digital regulations a “digital duty of care” therefore puts the proposal firmly in the heart of western legal tradition. At the press conference announcing the planned legislation, Albanese and Wells called on parents whose children took their own lives after using social media, and advocates for tighter regulation of social media – all of whom were unsurprisingly in favor of the law and praised the government for having the courage to advance it. When discussing Australia’s social media ban, Albanese nearly always admits it is not perfect and would not mean all Australian children under 16 immediately vanish from social media. “We knew it would not be perfect but would not let that be the enemy of the good,” he said today, and then said Australia’s policy “Started a global movement” that has since seen over 20 countries impose social media bans for children. The PM suggested a digital duty of care could catch on, too, and Wells agreed. “There is a global reckoning coming for big tech,” she said. “And it started in Australia.” ®
A US law firm is alleging that UK-based telecoms and software company ConnexAI sold it software and AI systems that failed to perform as the vendor claimed, and then unlawfully renewed its contract. ConnexAI has rejected the allegations. The dispute has involves two court cases, both of which are ongoing. DK Law, a personal injury specialist based in California, alleged in a California court filing in April that ConnexAI promises “customers a telephone system and AI software solution with functionality that does not exist or perform as represented.” It also alleges in the California complaint [PDF] that ConnexAI continued to send it invoices after it had told the vendor it was not renewing the year-long contract. The Register understands that ConnexAI believes the allegations to be frivolous and without merit. The vendor is branded ConnexAI, and registered as Connex One Limited in the UK and Connex One Inc in the US. The customer’s claim followed a complaint that ConnexAI itself filed against the law firm the month before. In March 2026, in a New York court, ConnexAI filed a complaint [PDF] claiming its law firm customer had breached its contract by failing to pay invoices. Dan Richardson, ConnexAI general manager of North America, said in a statement: “There is a limit to what we can say while the matter is before the court. This claim is one part of a wider dispute which was initiated by Connex One Inc. The allegations now being made are rejected, and we would note that they were raised only after we issued proceedings which are active.” In its complaint in the US District Court, Central District of California, Southern Division, DK Law alleges that ConnexAI sold it a telephone system and software on the basis that it would provide phone and voice services integrated with SMS and WhatsApp. ConnexAI also said its Athena software included “sentiment analysis, entity recognition, call transcripts, interaction clustering, training cues, and the ability to identify trends.” Crucially, it also claimed the AI transcription worked in Spanish. “ConnexAI represented that the Athena AI software included AI Agent, AI Guru, AI Analytics, AI Voice, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), all of which were represented to elevate customer interactions and enhance customer engagement and experience,” the filing said. Using AI agents would offer around-the-clock availability, faster response times and personalized interactions, with a “human-like voice and text-based communication,” the complaint argued. After less than a year using the software, DK Law alleged its experience of the software differed from the claims made by the vendor. According to the California filing, the telephone system frequently “went down”, with calls often dropped or unanswered. Calls were also consistently misrouted, the customer alleges. The problems were reported to the vendor’s support team. After the issue was escalated, the filing continues, ConnexAI sent US technical services engineers and the UK-based CTO to troubleshoot. “Sometimes the problem was resolved for the moment, only to recur shortly thereafter, with no permanent fix,” the complaint claimed. In addition, WhatsApp was unreliable and effectively unusable, DK Law alleges. While ConnexAI had claimed its ASR “would never miss a word,” DK Law claimed “this too was false.” Per the filing, on checking recordings of calls, the customer claims to have discovered that only a few seconds of a conversation were actually recorded despite evidence of a longer call. “Connex also represented in pre-contract discussions that its software was able to create real-time call transcripts of customer interactions conducted in English and Spanish. However, in reality, the Connex software only sometimes produced a transcript. When compared to the recorded conversations, DK Law found the transcripts of calls conducted in English to be inaccurate, and the Spanish language transcription did not work at all,” the California law firm alleged. Given the performance, the filing claims, Brendan Haverlock, DK Law CTO, told the vendor that the contract would not be renewed after it expired in October 2025. But that was not the end of the matter. The complaint alleges ConnexAI continued to invoice DK Law after the end of the contract term, demanding payment and "harassing its employees" for payment, the customer alleged. In March 2026, Connex Inc, the US company, launched a legal claim in the New York case against DK Law in which it alleged DK Law had failed to make the required payments and breached its contract. The filing, which was originally made in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and then moved to a New York District Court, said that in October 2024, the two companies entered into an agreement, which “renewed for a subsequent term commencing on October 8, 2025.” However, in the separate but related California filing in April, DK Law alleged that ConnexAI had already breached the contract “by failing… to implement and deliver telecommunications and software services in a manner consistent with industry standards.” It also said in the filing that ConnexAI's claim that the contract had automatically renewed was not in accordance with New York State law, which “required Connex to give written notice of the automatic renewal in advance.” The law covers telecommunications and software. ConnexAI “never provided the requisite notice of automatic renewal,” DK Law alleged. In the California Court, DK Law seeks restitution and damages. In a statement to The Register, ConnexAI’s Richardson questioned why Connex One Ltd was included on the California claim, given Connex Inc sued DK Law in New York. In the California filing, DK Law alleged the UK company “directly participated in the sales process, provided or controlled implementation and support personnel, and directed or ratified the post-notice renewal and retention conduct.” It said the US company is wholly owned and operated by the UK’s Connex One Limited and acted as a contracting arm or agent. The case is now waiting to move through the courts. Last week, (August 27) the California court denied DK Law’s claim, but only insofar as it “stayed” the case, pending the New York claim. In effect, that case is put on hold until the New York case is settled. DK Law is attempting to have the New York case dismissed and has requested the court hear oral arguments. On September 1, in an order and opinion filed by federal magistrate judge Katharine H Parker, the motion to stay the case was denied [PDF].® Reg note: We are not accepting comments on this article and have closed the forum.
Brazil’s election court faces a new AI test after a synthetic Jair Bolsonaro appeared in campaign content, exposing gaps between regulation and technology.
Brazil’s election court faces a new AI test after a synthetic Jair Bolsonaro appeared in campaign content, exposing gaps between regulation and technology.
Operation Bluebird has launched Twitter.now while fighting X over rights to the Twitter name, betting nostalgia and AI tools can build a new social network.
Operation Bluebird has launched Twitter.now while fighting X over rights to the Twitter name, betting nostalgia and AI tools can build a new social network.
Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned “Twitter” name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now.
“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird’s cofounders, told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”
As Ars reported in December 2025, Coates and his coterie believe that when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and quickly changed the company's name to X, the Twitter identity and intellectual property were abandoned.
Tomáš Jiříkovský, a primary defendant in a major Czech cryptocurrency-laundering investigation, has signaled for the first time that he may cooperate with authorities. Following a custody hearing, a court ruled that Jiříkovský must remain in detention due to flight risks and concerns that he retains control over undisclosed crypto assets. Current Status: Extended Detention The […]
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