Tinder owner fined €11m by Data Protection Commission

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has issued an €11m fine on Tinder's parent company Match for failing to comply with GDPR rules.

The fine is in relation to a tool that allows users to request their personal data.

Data Commissioner Niamh Sweeney said the fine was issued because Tinder's tool only gave users a portion of the data it held on them.

"What you would get is the number of times you swiped left or right on a particular day, the time you logged in, or the number of matches you made in a day", she said.

"But there are other types of data, analytics data that wouldn't have been included, that could include your gender, your latitude or longitude, the city you were logging in from, and other types of data", she said.

Match has already indicated that it will appeal the fine, meaning the payment will have to wait for a decision n from the European Court of Justice.

Since 2021 the Data Protection Commission has issued almost €4.5 billion in fines, but to date only a tiny percentage - €20m - has actually been paid.

Commissioner Sweeney said they were hoping to get a decision from the European Court in the next 12 to 18 months which then could see the payments start to flow.

The second part of the DPC's decision relating to Tinder is to get the company to alter the tool to supply all relevant data and disclose which data they cannot provide for privacy reasons.

In a statement, Match said they will appeal.

"We have received the DPC's decision and have decided to appeal. Tinder engaged with the DPC throughout this investigation, and we stand behind the privacy protections we’ve built for our users."