Use Grindr Without Linking Facebook or Your Phone Number

Grindr isn’t your typical dating app and has been a subject of scrutiny for the last five years. Between the selling of the app to a Chinese company and back to an American company and its problem of the racist racial search feature, it may cause some hesitation in potential users who are concerned about their privacy and data. Many would-be users question if there is a way to use Grindr anonymously and without linking your Facebook account or having to divulge your own phone number

Before getting into this possibility, it’s important to learn about the origins of this popular dating app.

What is Grindr?

Grindr is an online, geo-located dating app for the LGBTQ community that was developed and launched in 2009 initially for gay men. Today, millions of people throughout the world in the LGBTQ community use the app to meet like-minded individuals securely. 

What makes Grindr different from other dating apps such as Tindr is that it’s more for one-time sexual encounters than long-term relationships, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen!

With a geolocation feature, users can turn on their location and find other users within 100 meters of each other. In most cases, the users are direct about what they want – no beating around the bush. Users can exchange pictures and set up a place where they both feel at ease to meet. For safety’s sake, Grindr advises users to meet in a public location to ensure a person is who they claim to be. 

There is so much that makes Grindr a great dating app. Its Xtra features has numerous benefits. For example, you can look for other users – no matter where they are located in the world – to reach out and connect with. If you plan on traveling somewhere, this can be a useful benefit.

Another benefit is that you can see up to six times more users located near you than without the feature. 

There is a cost to the Xtra feature but does come with a seven-day trial to see if it’s something you’d want.

Grindr Online Privacy & Safety Concerns

Of course, like any dating app available, there are some legitimate concerns about safety and privacy. The company has been condemned for its information privacy practices, and Twitter even took steps to ban the app in January for how it handled the problem. 

Although developed in America, the company was sold to a Chinese company in 2016 to Beijing Kunlun, a Chinese gaming giant, for $93 million. The Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S., a U.S. government national security panel, looked into the purchase and was unhappy with what it saw as a huge privacy problem.

According to the CFIUS, it was worried the Chinese government would have access to the 27 million users’ private information. It was later learned that Grindr permitted Beijing engineers to access millions of U.S. users’ information, such as their HIV status and private messages. 

Beijing Kunlun said the constant interference from the U.S. government led to the decision to sell the app back to an American company. That company is San Vincente Acquisitions, a low-profile investment group, bought Grindr for $608.

 With Grindr exchanging hands so often, it often leads to the question of just how safe is Grindr. Although it’s in an American company’s hands now, does that make the users’ information even safer or less safe? After all, it’s not just one company that has this information, but three companies. If information is being stored somewhere (at all three companies), how protected is this information?

How safe would you feel about your private information on the Grindr app? If you don’t feel comfortable using Grindr with your personal information, you may wonder if you could use it without giving up your privacy? 

How To Set Up An Anonymous Grindr Account

Setting up a Grindr account can be quick and easy – you just use an email address and set up a password. You can also sign up using your Facebook account. Once the account is created, you can use the information to sign into it on any supported device.

Of course, what does this mean for your privacy?

Can you sign up for Grindr without a phone number?

MobileSMS.io Can Keep You Safe on Grindr 

When it comes to your safety and privacy, you can never be too careful. Like other dating apps, you need to be mindful of how much personal information you share. Never use your full name, email address, phone number, etc. Use a profile picture that has never been used on the Internet (images can be reversed searched that can lead to account identity). 

If you opt to move conversations from the app to the phone, you probably don’t want to share this information with the person. This is why MobileSMS.io is so useful.

MobileSMS.io offers a temporary number for Grindr users, which means you can safely call another user without sharing your actual phone number. This disposable number for Grindr is useful because if you’re only hooking up for a short time, there’s no reason for them to have your actual phone number (potential for stalking if they want more and you don’t.)

If you choose to sign up with Grindr through Facebook, you should only do so through a secondary Facebook account that doesn’t include using your own phone number or personal FB account. Not only when you keep yourself safe, but it’s against FB’s own terms of service to have a second FB account.  

You can do this by using MobileSMS.io to attain a temporary phone number for Grindr and Facebook. The number will work for 10 minutes, just long enough to get the code to verify the FB account. 

When it comes to your safety, there is never enough that you can do, and MobileSMS.io wants to help you stay safe! With a disposable number for Grindr, you can stay safe while trying to find hookups near you.