Concerns as Chinese tech company takes over Grindr
January 18, 2018Earlier this month Chinese tech company Kunlun Group Limited acquired Grindr for US $400 million prompting concerns from former US intelligence officials. The tech giant bought out the world’s largest gay dating app when it purchased CEO and founder Joel Simkhai’s stake in the company. Over the last few weeks the Chinese company has replaced several key figures, installing Yahui Zhou as the new interim CEO and Wei Zhou as executive vice-chairman and CFO.
The much-publicised takeover has drawn some concerns from several former US intelligence officials. According to the Washington Post reports have surfaced that Beijing has been gathering data on US and western countries, “as part of a unique and well-planned effort to build files on foreigners for intelligence purposes.” This comes from Pater Mattis, a former intelligence analyst and China fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. He goes on to say that “what you can see from Chinese intelligence practices is a clear effort to collect a lot of personal information on a lot of different people, and to build a database of names that’s potentially useful either for influence or for intelligence.”
Beijing is well known to exert pressure on Chinese tech companies to release data to the government which has many wondering what this will mean for the huge amount of sensitive data Grindr holds. Peter Sloterdyk, Grindr marketing executive, has assured that the company remains under US laws and that they utilise state-of-the-art technology to protect user data.
Yahui Zhou released a statement upon becoming interim CEO saying that he is “extremely excited about the excellent work Grindr is doing in becoming a leading global technology company, serving and supporting our users no matter where they are in the world.”
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