Not expecting much from her. I’m sure she’s not homophobic, but why would anyone tape what she says (even sings)? This is surely gonna be used by the right-wingnuts against us. Just wait and watch.

Hong Kong: AIDS Group Blames Grindr

Joe.My.God. reports:

A Hong Kong AIDS group is blaming Grindr for a local rise in STDs and HIV infections. Gay Star Newsreports:

Spokesperson for AIDS Concern, Panda Cheung Yin-mei, told China Daily that Grindr ‘is one of the factors that are contributing to the record high levels of infections’. More worryingly, Cheung says attempts to engage with Grindr in order to work together to send a safe-sex message through the app have been obstructed by the American company. “Grindr is a money-making software,” says Cheung. “They have tightened monitoring of users and they don’t welcome NGOs doing outreach on the Grindr networks. Once they find a phone number is an NGO number, they block the number so the NGO cannot do it again.” Cheung added that the problem in Hong Kong is more serious than in other parts of the world where Grindr is popular because of the absence of sex education in schools. 

A Grindr spokeman told a local Chinese newspaper: “Grindr strongly encourages our users to engage in safe sex practices, get tested and know their HIV status.”

Did The London Olympics Really Break Grindr?

Queerty reports:

Breathe easy, Britons: the realm has been saved. Grindr is once again functional in London, following a massive outage that had been blamed on an influx of horny athletes.
It’s unclear what actually caused the outage, but over the last few days, Grindr ground to a halt in England.
Tabloids leapt on the correlation: a gay hookup app failed as competitors were arriving. It must be the Olympics’ fault! Even though there are only 18 openly gay Olympic and Paralympic athletes out of 12,602.
Isn’t it maybe a tad more likely that it’s arriving tourists, and not  athletes, who are to blame? Or that it was just a glitch in a server somewhere that had nothing to do with the Olympics at all?
Whatever the cause, Grindr CEO Joel Simkhai gave the service a little kick in the pants and it’s back up and running. The company has also offered a free week of service to their paid members, so enjoy.
British readers, have you been experiencing outages? More importantly, have you hooked up with any sexy sports stars? Pics or it didn’t happen.

Grindr Goes Political On Gay Rights

Via Grindr’s website:

About the initiative
Grindr has grown to be a global community of over 3 million users in just two and a half years. In that time, using our geotargeting software and massive global user base, we have been able to participate in some of the most significant recent events in the GLBT community including the overturning of Proposition 8 and the recent passage of marriage equality in New York State.
Grindr has a greater capacity to provide assistance within the GLBT community and harnessing the power of our global user base is where the idea for Grindr for Equality was born. The ability to contact people in specific geographic areas en masse aided us in swaying voters in California and enabled users to contact their representatives in New York to vote in favor of the marriage equality bill. There is strength in numbers and this initiative will enable our users to use our platform for the greater good of our community.
The goal of Grindr for Equality is to raise awareness for GLBT issues and spur action across the globe.
Submitting is quick, easy and truly makes a difference
Grindr for Equality welcomes any and all information pertaining to the GLBT community. All that we ask is that submissions are in the following format:
Your name
Your location (Please include your country)
Best way to contact you
A news link related to your submission (not required but would be greatly appreciated)
A brief description of how this relates to you and the GLBT community
How Grindr for Equality could provide assistance
If applicable, a contact person close to what is going on
Please send all submissions in an e-mail with your location, country first, in the subject line followed by “Submission” (example: “Italy: Rome, Lazio - Submission” or “USA: Salt Lake City, Utah - Submission”)
Submit or send submissions to equality@grindr.com

Shit Grindr Tricks Say (NSFW)

No comments. 

(Via Lady Bunny’s Facebook).

Grindr “Mandatory Update” To Tackle Hack 

Pink News UK reports:

The gay man locating app Grindr has said it will release a mandatory security update after thousands of Australian users’ accounts were put at risk.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a hacker had listed sensitive profile information online, allowing Grindr users to be impersonated.
The app, which has amassed millions of users over nearly three years, can be used on iPhone, Blackberry OS and Android devices in 192 countries around the world.
Grindr said last week only a small number of Australian users had been affected by the hacker’s site, but it would be taking urgent measures to protect security.
The hacker’s site, which has now been taken down, reportedly exploited a gap in Grindr’s security to publicly list users’ profile names, passwords and favourite users.
It also allowed hackers to send and receive messages as a user without that user’s knowledge.
Grindr said on Friday that genuine user chat histories were not compromised as they are not stored by the app.
Address and credit card information was not hacked.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the hacker exploited the mechanism through which profiles communicate, a unique sequence of numbers rather than a profile name and password.
When the sequence of numbers was replaced with another user’s numbers, a hacker could reportedly log into any account.
In response to a request about how users around the world would be affected, Joel Simkhai, Grindr’s founder, told PinkNews.co.uk: “Like most other responsible companies, we don’t comment on specifics of security enhancements or allegations about network issues – that wouldn’t serve the security of our users, our networks, or web security in general.
“Based on Grindr’s ongoing investigation, we took legal and technological actions to block a site that violated our terms of service. This site impacted a small number of primarily Australian Grindr users and it remains shut down. Blendr users were not affected by this.
“We continuously make improvements to our platform to increase security across our networks. We are releasing a mandatory update to our apps over the next few days to enhance security. Users will be notified via in-app messaging when the update is available or they can visit twitter.com/grindr. Our users can be assured that Grindr does not retain chat history, hold credit card information or addresses – and no such information was ever compromised.”

Grindr App Hacked by Evil Aussie! Your Dick Pics May Soon Hit The Internet

Queerty reports:

Rutrow! Gay hookup app Grindr has been compromised by a hacker based in Sydney, Australia, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
The hacker found a frighteningly easy way to log in as a user other than yourself, impersonate them, and steal any and all revealing pictures that had been exchanged in “romancing” sessions.
Now Grindr CEO Joel Simkhai and his underlings are scrambling to put out a patch that blocks the security loophole. “We are certainly aware of a lot of these vulnerabilities and they will be fixed as fast as humanly possible,” he said.
But did they really know these obvious chinks in the force-field existed? Wouldn’t they have already fixed such errors in the almost 3 years the app’s been out?
An expert in the matter said that the hacking merely overcame embarrassingly low-grade security. The expert said Grindr and its pointless straight cousin Blendr “had no real security,” calling them “very poorly designed … [with] poor session security and authentication.”
Apparently the hacking website had been up and running for months before it got shut down last Friday, and any ol’ Internet Joe Schmo could access it.

• The website, registered on July 14 last year, allowed the hacker to search for any Grindr user regardless of their location, and capitalised on the vulnerabilities to offer other services not designed by the apps.
• Material seen by this website suggests that a number of Australian users had their Twitter profiles linked to Grindr profiles on the web page, making it easier to find users.
• At one point, according to sources who saw the website before it was taken down, it listed users’ Grindr pseudonyms, passwords, their personal favourites (bookmarked friends) and allowed them to be impersonated, and thus have messages sent and received without their knowledge. At one point, the website also allowed users’ profile pictures to be replaced.

So, is there anybody who go on the hacker’s website before it got shut down? Want to come forward with more of this type of stuff?

I only wonder…

Grindr Senator Has History Of Anti-Gay Positions

The Advocate reports:

The Republican senator who resigned this weekend after pictures surfaced from his alleged Grindr account has a history of antigay stances in Puerto Rico, according to a roundup by theBlabbeando blog. 

Roberto Arango was a leader of the New Progressive Party before resigning when numerousnude pictures were distributed online. The photos were supposedly shared on Grindr. When confronted by a reporter with a copy of a merely shirtless photo, Arango said he was documenting his weight loss.

Arango was vice-chair for George W. Bush’s 2004 Puerto Rico campaign and leaves behind a trail of opposition to gay rights. Here’s a comprehensive list from blogger Andrés Duque:

- Arango served as mouthpiece for a campaign against civil unions in 2007.

- As senator, Arango voted in 2007 in favor of a ban on legally recognizing any relationship not between one man and one woman. The bill was blocked in the House of Representatives.

- Arango shepherded a bill banning adoption rights for LGBT people, then voted for it, and it’s now law in Puerto Rico. 

- Arango used a Spanish antigay slur to describe a political opponent during a campaign rally. 

Read a detailed look at these incidents.

PUERTO RICO: Chair Of 2004 George W. Bush Campaign Busted Showing His Ass (Literally) On Grindr (NSFW)

Guannabee reports:

Another day, another politician caught posting lewd pictures of himself online. So who fucked up this time? None other than Puerto Rican senator Roberto Arango.
Last Friday Puerto Rican TV show Dando Candelaaired the picture you see to the left which they supposedly downloaded from the popular gay cruising app Grindr. The picture, they said, is one of Roberto Arango, senator and president of the Partido Popular Democratico [Popular Democratic Party]. When asked about the picture, Roberto Arango didn’t confirm or deny taking the photograph…
Roberto says he’s been documenting his weight loss and that this picture may very well be a part of that:

• “You know I’ve been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I’ve been taking pictures. I don’t remember taking this particular picture but I’m not gonna say I didn’t take it. I’d tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don’t.”

Oh, OK. We’ll humor you and give you the befit of the doubt. Just as soon as you explain this picture, supposedly taken off the same Grindr account:

Well, a little later than sooner, he ended up showing how much of an asshole (no pun intended) for supporting Bush back in 2004 when he campaigned on defending “marriage” from fags. Well, here’s the proof that the ones that are the loudest against us, always end up being the biggest “queens”. 

UPDATE: According to Joe Jervis, here’s a little of his political history:

In 2009 he voted in favor of Resolution 99 which would have amended Puerto Rico’s constitution to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages (it didn’t pass). He has been opposed to civil union bills and in 2004 he used a rubber duck and made it quack to make fun of an opponent (in Puerto Rico, the word for duck, “pato”, means faggot.)

UPDATE II:  He lost his job:

A Puerto Rico lawmaker has resigned following reports that explicit photos of him surfaced on an iPhone application for gays and bisexuals, the head of the U.S. territory’s Senate announced Sunday. Sen. Roberto Arango, a Republican who represents the capital of San Juan, presented his letter of resignation after a weekend meeting, Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz said. Schatz did not release the lawmaker’s letter, but said the circumstances that led to the resignation “are very lamentable.” Local news media published photos from the application showing a man’s nude upper body with a cellphone obscuring his face. Another photo showed a rear view of a nude man on his hands and knees. Another showed a fuzzy image of a face that seemed to match Arango’s.

Blog Of The Month: Douchebags Of Grindr 

Welcome to my newest segment “Blog Of The Month”! And I couldn’t have started with a better one. Here’s “Douchebags Of Grindr”. I think you can guess what it is about. You’ll see on this blog all those who make our Community go back 20 years.

And about the guy in the picture… is he allergic to himself, then? And good to know he’s “committed” as of right now. To what? I don’t know, but surely it ain’t to a relationship.

I L-O-V-E this blog! Why I didn’t think of this before?! 

Savage & Choi Cruise Grindr At CPAC

Genius.