Gay dating,
not data mining.
Our ads compare beau. to Grindr. Attack ads deserve skepticism, so here is every claim with its receipts: regulators, courts, Mozilla, and Grindr's own published pages. Check our math.
Last updated September 7, 2026
In-app ads
You don't have to take our word for it. Grindr sells ad removal back to you as a premium feature, which is its own admission that the free app is an ad machine. beau. has no ad inventory to sell. There is nothing to remove.
- Grindr Grindr XTRA help page lists ad-free browsing as a paid subscription feature.
- Grindr Grindr Unlimited sales page sells the same escape from their own ads at a higher tier.
Uses your data to train AI
Grindr's own AI privacy page says users are enrolled by default for AI training on profile photos, age, taps, and display names, with chat content available for training under a separate permission. Their CEO has been explicit about wanting to learn from your messages. On beau., automated safety scans check photos at upload and that is the end of it. Nothing you do here trains anyone's AI model. Not ours, because we don't have one. Not anyone else's, because your data isn't for sale.
- Grindr Grindr's AI privacy help page describes default enrollment of profile data for AI training, with sensitive data like chats gated behind a separate consent.
- Grindr Grindr's own gAI announcement lays out the plan to build AI features on user data.
- Mozilla *Privacy Not Included review quotes Grindr's CEO on user messages: "we can understand who they are better through all those messages."
- EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation (June 2026) called on Grindr to put queer safety and privacy over profits, citing its AI plans.
Shares or sells your data to advertising partners
Not a rumor. A national data-protection regulator investigated, fined them roughly $7 million, and a court upheld it. The data disclosed to ad partners included GPS location, IP address, advertising ID, age, gender, and the fact of being a Grindr user at all, which the regulator treated as revealing sexual orientation.
- Regulator Norwegian Data Protection Authority decision (2021): Grindr disclosed user data to advertisers without valid consent. Fine of 6.5 million euros.
- Court Oslo District Court (2023) confirmed the violation and the fine on appeal.
- Grindr Grindr's own privacy policy says it "may share your personal information with advertising and marketing partners," and its U.S. state-rights section offers an opt-out from the "sale/sharing" of your personal information. The opt-out exists because Grindr treats at least some advertising disclosures as "sale" or "sharing" under state privacy laws.
- Mozilla *Privacy Not Included review: Grindr "share[s] or sell[s] your personal information with ad or marketing partners," and researchers observed over a thousand tracker calls within two minutes of use.
- Press BuzzFeed News (2018) revealed Grindr sent users' HIV status to outside analytics firms. NPR covered Grindr's admission.
- Press The Guardian (September 2026): Grindr agreed to pay £26 million (about $35 million) to settle a UK High Court claim brought on behalf of 12,000 users who alleged it shared sensitive personal data, including in some cases HIV status, with advertising companies before 2020. Grindr disputes the allegations and admits no liability. It is paying anyway, in two installments through March 2027.
- Press The Washington Post (2021): a senior U.S. Catholic official resigned after a newsletter bought "anonymized" app-signal data from a broker and traced his Grindr use to his home and office. Gizmodo (2022), covering the Wall Street Journal's investigation, confirmed Grindr users' precise locations had been for sale through ad networks since at least 2017. Nobody hacked anything. The data was available to buy.
Tracks your activity across apps and websites
"Tracking" here is Apple's own definition: linking your data with other companies' data for advertising, across apps and websites you visit. Grindr declares it on their own App Store label. Open ours next to theirs and compare the "Data Used to Track You" section. Ours doesn't have one.
- Grindr Grindr's App Store privacy label declares "Data Used to Track You": Location, Identifiers, and Usage Data, with third-party advertising among the stated purposes.
- Grindr Grindr's own privacy policy describes "collecting information about your use of other sites and services to provide advertising" and serving ads "based on your activity across other services." Cross-site tracking, in their words.
- Mozilla *Privacy Not Included review documents the tracker volume and ad-partner data flows behind that label.
End-to-end encrypted messages
End-to-end means the company that runs the app cannot read your chats even if it wants to. Grindr's own help pages acknowledge staff can access chat content when needed. That is, by definition, not end-to-end encryption.
- Grindr Grindr's account-security help page describes staff access to chat messages under specific circumstances. Readable by staff means not end-to-end.
- Mozilla *Privacy Not Included review: Grindr encrypts data in transit and at rest on their servers, which is table stakes, not end-to-end.
On Grindr, gay men are the product.
Here, the only product is the app.
Ads, AI training, data sharing, and cross-site tracking are all ways of selling you. A subscription sells software. You were never meant to be the commodity.
Know who's behind your apps
We kept politics out of the comparison table, because who a company answers to isn't a yes/no checkbox. It's a judgment call, and you should make it with the reporting in front of you. The short version, per The Advocate: Grindr has spent $1.6 million lobbying in Washington, its head of government affairs spent a decade as a Republican aide on Capitol Hill, including six years working for a senator who voted against codifying same-sex marriage, and its CEO tweeted, in his own words: "I am a conservative & agree with some Trump policies." Read the coverage and decide what that's worth to you.
Where beau. stands: founder-owned, queer-owned, with no venture capital to answer to. No lobbyists, no PAC. The company spends nothing on politics. Its founder gives personally, and it goes where you'd hope: to queer causes and the people who show up for us. Our revenue is subscriptions from the people who use the app. That's the whole constituency.
- Advocate "Grindr's surprising ties to the Republican Party, explained" (April 2026): the lobbying spend, the hires, the donations, the CEO's own words.
- NTV News "Sen. Fischer votes against 'Respect for Marriage Act'" (November 2022): that senator is Deb Fischer of Nebraska. Grindr's head of government affairs, Joe Hack, spent six years working for her, including as her chief of staff. She voted no on protecting same-sex marriage.
- Daily Caller "Republican Nebraska Sen Deb Fischer Attends Elite DC Party Hosted By Major Gay Dating App" (April 2026): Fischer, photographed beside Hack at Grindr's White House Correspondents' Dinner party. Even the conservative press found the pairing notable.
- Advocate "Why Grindr is lobbying in Trump's Washington" (April 2026): opinion piece on what the company's Washington posture means for queer users.
- Time TIME (2022) on the CEO's conservative tweets and the user backlash that followed.
Built for queer men.
Private by design.
Yours, on your terms.
Statements about Grindr reflect public regulatory decisions, court rulings, independent research, press reporting, and Grindr's own published policies and store listings as of the date above. If any of it materially changes, we'll update this page. Our own commitments are spelled out in plain language in the beau. privacy policy.