An investigation details how a group of conservative Colorado Catholics spent millions to acquire mobile app tracking data to find priests using gay dating apps
A group of philanthropists poured money into a Denver nonprofit that obtained dating and hookup app data and shared … Tweets: @ukigoni , @washingtonpost , @yashar , and @washingtonpost Tweets: Uki Goñi / @ukigoni : A new @washingtonpost story illustrates how the kind of data we give up willingly every day online can be used to target populations, in this case, gay Catholic priests. ✍️ @mboorstein & @heatherkelly https://twitter.com/... @washingtonpost : The secretive effort was the work of a Denver nonprofit called Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal, according to public records, an audio recording of the nonprofit's president discussing its mission and other documents. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @yashar : This is sick! What a waste of valuable resources and what a horrible invasion of privacy! https://twitter.com/... @washingtonpost : The use of data is emblematic of a new surveillance frontier in which private individuals can potentially track other Americans' locations and activities using commercially available information. No U.S. data privacy laws prohibit the sale of this data. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Washington Post investigation identifies the buyer behind a practice that has been surfacing since 2021, when a [[a:1159327|top US Catholic official resigned after a Catholic media site obtained his alleged Grindr data from an undisclosed broker]]. What was then a one-off outing now appears to be an organized program: Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal, a Denver nonprofit funded by millions in donations from conservative Colorado Catholics, acquired dating and hookup app data at scale.
The story also lands on a documented supply chain. Grindr's long-running claim that data shared with brokers is encrypted and unidentifiable has repeatedly failed to hold, and research going back years shows apps like Grindr, OkCupid, Tinder, and period-trackers passing intimate user data to brokers — inventory that any motivated buyer can purchase.
First-order effects
- Priests identified through the purchased data face exposure and church discipline, while the donors behind Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal are publicly named as the funding source — converting an anonymous surveillance operation into an accountable one.
- Dating app operators whose data ended up in the nonprofit's hands now face renewed scrutiny of their broker-sharing practices, a vulnerability Grindr has already been pressed on.
Second-order effects
- App makers under pressure to cut broker ties would shrink the commercial data market that buyers like the CDC — which bought location data from millions of US phones during the pandemic — also rely on, forcing both private and government customers toward fewer, more contested sources.
- Religious groups on other sides of this dynamic take note: the Bless Every Home model of mapping neighbors by religion and ethnicity shows the same appetite for granular personal data operating openly rather than covertly.
Third-order effects
- If ideologically motivated nonprofits can buy targeting data about specific populations, the practical permission boundary around commercially sold location and behavioral data effectively disappears — pushing the real question to regulators and platform policies rather than individual consent screens.
- The pattern suggests a structural split in religious organizing: institutions that treat commercial data as an enforcement tool versus users who must assume any app-shared signal can be weaponized against them, eroding trust in the entire ad-tech data chain.
The trend: Commercially available app and location data is becoming a tool of targeted social and political enforcement, with each exposed buyer — from churches to federal agencies — raising the pressure on regulators to close the broker loophole.