Grindr did not receive a new fine in 2025. On 21 October 2025, Norway’s Court of Appeal rejected the company’s appeal and upheld the 65 million NOK administrative fine first issued in 2021 over the sharing of users’ personal data with advertising partners.
Why was Grindr fined?
Norway’s Data Protection Authority found that Grindr had disclosed personal data to advertising partners without the legal basis required by the GDPR. The authority’s decision covered both ordinary personal data and special-category data: it found no valid basis under Article 6 for the processing and no applicable exception under Article 9 for the special-category data.
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The information at issue included users’ precise GPS location and the fact that they used Grindr. The authority’s case concerned disclosures in the advertising context, including practices connected to a prior consent-management platform. It was not a finding that Grindr read users’ private messages, nor does it establish that every form of targeted advertising is unlawful.
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What did the 2025 appeal decide?
The 2025 development was the latest stage in a case that began in 2020, when the Norwegian Consumer Council said it uncovered how Grindr shared personal data with commercial partners. The authority issued its final fine in December 2021. Grindr challenged the decision through several stages:
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- September 2023: Norway’s Privacy Appeals Board upheld the authority’s decision.
- July 2024: Oslo District Court upheld it.
- September 2024: Grindr filed a further appeal.
- 21 October 2025: The Court of Appeal rejected that appeal and upheld the fine, according to the Norwegian Consumer Council’s report.
The Council’s English-language account says the Court of Appeal considered clearly misleading Grindr’s public statement: “we do not sell your personal user information to third parties for advertising purposes”. That is the Council’s account of the court’s conclusion; the case concerned advertising-purpose sharing, not just whether the company used the word “sell.”
How much was the fine?
The final administrative fine was 65 million NOK. A separate figure of 100 million NOK was an advance notification amount reported early in the case; it was not the final penalty. The 2025 Court of Appeal decision upheld the 65 million NOK fine issued in 2021.
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What data did the authority say was shared?
The regulator highlighted two kinds of information in the advertising disclosures:
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- Grindr use: the fact that a person used the app, which can reveal sensitive information about them.
The legal distinction matters: Article 6 addresses the lawful basis for processing personal data generally, while Article 9 places additional restrictions on processing special-category data. The authority found the particular disclosures at issue lacked the required legal basis and protection.
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What the ruling does—and does not—establish
The outcome is a case-specific regulatory and court decision about Grindr’s investigated data-sharing practices. It does not quantify how many users were harmed, show how often similar data flows occur across apps, or establish that current Grindr users are tracked in the same way. Current privacy settings and policies are also separate from the historical conduct adjudicated in this case.
Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, Director of Digital Policy at the Norwegian Consumer Council, said: “There should not be a free-for-all when it comes to collecting and sharing personal data.” That is an advocacy statement by Myrstad, not a statement from the Court of Appeal.
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