By Bill Toulas
Publication Date: 2026-10-12 20:13:00
Norway’s Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet) has fined Xandr, a Microsoft-owned advertising company, $9.6M (NOK 92 million) for unlawfully processing and sharing sensitive data belonging to Grindr users in the country.
The data protection authority said this is the largest fine it has ever issued.
“We issued such a high fine in this case because the breaches we identified were very serious,” said Line Coll, Director General of Datatilsynet.
“Thousands of users in Norway have been subjected to unlawful sharing of their sensitive data.”
According to the authority’s findings, between July 2018 and April 2020, Xandr managed real-time advertising auctions inside Grindr that potentially exposed users’ data, including sensitive sexual orientation information, to thousands of companies.
These auctions work by advertisers bidding for the right to display an ad to a Grindr user after they receive profiling information from Xandr, which acted as the…
