If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. In , a government contractor and technologist named Mike Yeagley began making the rounds in Washington, DC.
A popular dating and hookup app , Grindr relied on the GPS capabilities of modern smartphones to connect potential partners in the same city, neighborhood, or even building. The app can show how far away a potential partner is in real time, down to the foot.
In its 10 years of operation, Grindr had amassed millions of users and become a central cog in gay culture around the globe. But to Yeagley, Grindr was something else: one of the tens of thousands of carelessly designed mobile phone apps that leaked massive amounts of data into the opaque world of online advertisers.
That data, Yeagley knew, was easily accessible by anyone with a little technical know-how. So Yeagleyโa technology consultant then in his late forties who had worked in and around government projects nearly his entire careerโmade a PowerPoint presentation and went out to demonstrate precisely how that data was a serious national security risk.
As he would explain in a succession of bland government conference rooms, Yeagley was able to access the geolocation data on Grindr users through a hidden but ubiquitous entry point: the digital advertising exchanges that serve up the little digital banner ads along the top of Grindr and nearly every other ad-supported mobile app and website.
