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Comment by lskopwol | Hacker News Reader

What makes Grindr special in this regard ? I’m sure there are other dating or social apps out there that also could be foreign owned and used for espionage....???

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> What makes Grindr special in this regard ? I’m sure there are other dating or social apps out there that also could be foreign owned and used for espionage....???

select opm.name, opm.address

from opm_security_clearance_files opm

join grindr_users grinder

where grinder.phone_number = opm.phone_number

and opm.clearance in ('SECRET', 'TOP SECRET', 'SCI');

If any of those people are in the closet, they could be susceptible to blackmail.

Simple explanation that likely explains the security panel's reasoning behind their statements.

Also explains why a phone number as an identity token is a horrible idea.

Replace grindr by some_other_site where some_other_site.orientation != 'straight' or some_other_site.fetish in (...) and it works out to the same result, no?

Yeah, definitely. I think it's arguable the same rational could even apply to a dating site for straight people. It would take a little more work and probably be less fruitful overall, but an adversary's intelligence agency could use it identify straight people (with security clearances) who may be trying to cheat on their spouses or whose marriage is disintegrating. Both of those situations could open someone up to manipulation (a honey trap [1], for instance).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment_of_spies#Love,_hon...

Knowing someone is gay is a classic blackmail situation, particularly within the gov world. Grindr is very sexually charged, so you get the most extreme sensitive bits here, combined with high profile people that are closeted and don’t want this information leaked. Not the same situation.

Kinda but probably not really.

Grindr is mostly used for semi-anonymous "hookups" - I am told anecdotally by people who used it and by the media at large - which is something even out and proud people might not wish the world to know (e.g. because their spouse might disprove), especially not in harsh detail. A lot of the communication on grindr ought to be pretty explicit too given how it gets used, something you might not want to see made public either, even if you're out of the closet already.

Now the other theoretical site might be as "bad" or even more so as grindr (the fetish website you suggested), or it might be a "tame" website used mostly in a "tame" manner, which of course still has "potential" to a blackmailer, but less so than the grindrs, tinders, backpages, adultfriendfrinders, etc of this world.

> where grinder.phone_number = opm.phone_number

why would grindr have that? Hell, they dont even validate the random string you can put in the email field

This is exactly what came to mind when the OPM and Ashley Madison hacks occurred.

Most likely because Grindr is primarily used for casual / anonymous same-sex encounters. Its users may be more susceptible to blackmail / extortion.

There are many users of the app who are not open about their lifestyle (“DL”)

They could use the info collected from users who happening to have state secrets (def-cons, state employees, etc...). The bottom line is that the Chinese could use this fact to blackmail those users to cough up what they know in exchange for forceful "coming out of a closet" announcement.

Lots of clueless closeted politicians use it.

Other dating apps also allow users to state their sexual preferences, so although Grindr might have a higher density of potential blackmail material, they're not even guaranteed to have the largest collection. There must be something else that sets them apart from others. (Maybe they were the first to be acquired by a Chinese company?)

My guess is the density of potential blackmail material _is_ what sets it apart from the others -- the very act of being registered on Grindr is almost a smoking gun for being non-heterosexual if you wanted to out somebody. Much better odds of finding a target that matches with your other info and much more "damning" evidence to scare people with.

edit: Furthermore, what other Chinese company owns a dating site used frequently by westerners?

For evidence, you'd probably produce screenshots of their profile and threaten to send them to people who know the blackmail victim. Now maybe having the Grindr logo on there is a bit scarier, but any other dating site with a profile listing "taboo" interests should work just as well.

Regarding your edit: I didn't mean that there was another Chinese company owning a dating site used by Westerners, but that it would explain what made Grindr special if there weren't another such company.

Unique with Grindr is that it's a safe bet that the majority of users have sent and received explicit photos. So if you want to find a congressman's dick pics that his wife doesn't know he's been sending to men..... grindr is probably a good place to do it.

The first line of the article reads:

  ... Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd is 
  seeking to sell Grindr LLC, the popular gay dating app it has 
  owned since 2016.

So what's the point here? The Chinese gaming company has already owned it for over 2 years and have access to the data already.

Right, they got what they wanted out of it, so now they are just selling the trash. The fact that they're selling, coupled with the basis for the decision to sell, will probably crater the price. And I suspect this will have an adverse effect on Grindr's monthly-user count, which won't help that sale price. Wouldn't be surprised if Grindr folds. And that will have a deterrent effect on other companies interested in Chinese money. Because for the Chinese government, it ain't about the money.

They don't want to sell... they're only forced to sell by the US government.

Grindr is specifically targeted at the male homosexual and MSM audience. The information that users share about themselves on Grindr is much more likely to be sensitive than a traditional dating site.

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