Grindr is still completing a probe into how The Pillar accessed the data, the app said, but noted they don’t think it was from Grindr itself and that the review is focusing on possible links to network providers, location data brokers and ad networks.
Grindr itself released a statement last month in response to The Pillar’s series of reports, saying the bloggers “brazenly” crossed a number of “ ethical, moral, and legal lines” and likened the investigation to a witch hunt. Flynn and Ed Condon were working at the agency, but Bermudez told the newspaper he did not inform them of the tip he’d received. The source came forward to the Catholic News Agency in 2018, when The Pillar editors J.D. Another conservative religion outlet, the Catholic News Agency, said it had been offered cell phone data by a source “concerned with reforming the Catholic clergy,” that the agency’s executive editor Alejandro Bermudez ultimately decided to decline because he believed the information had been gathered by “ sketchy” means, he told the New York Times. The Pillar says it obtained the information from a data vendor and had it authenticated by an outside consulting firm, but has offered no additional details. Questions still remain regarding how The Pillar came by the priests’ cell phone data, and if they were assisted by an outside source with an ulterior motive.
