Egypt: Grindr Warns Against Crackdown on LGBT Community, Using Social Media to Entrap Gay Men
Egypt continues to push the LGBT community further underground as the government cracks down on gay men via social media and hookup apps.
Grindr has released a warning to its Egyptian users. However, the Egyptian government undermines privacy to pursue a witch-hunt against its own citizens.
In a message sent to individual Grindr users, the popular hookup app warned users that the Egyptian government was using the app to entrap gay men, according to BuzzFeed.
"Egypt is arresting LGBT people, and police may be posing as LGBT on social media to entrap you," the message said. "Please be careful about arranging meetings with people you don't know, and be careful about posting anything that may reveal your identity."
During the summer, a user on Twitter known as @GrindrMap raised the alarm about a security flaw within Grindr that could be exploited by governments. On his website, he chronicles his work and explains how someone could manipulate the app to find the exact location of a Grindr user with Google Maps thanks to the app's geolocation capabilities.
When the issue first arose, Grindr did not release a statement but later sent a message suggesting users in nations with anti-gay laws hide their distance on their settings, the app announced on Aug. 28.
"It's a huge problem if Grindr runs such an infrastructure and doesn't act responsibly," GrindrMap told the Washington Post. In an attempt to rectify the problem, Grindr announced on Sept. 5 that it had made some security updates.
"Any user who connects to Grindr is these countries will have their distance hidden automatically by default, which include Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Liberia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. There are many more countries already being protected by this location change, and we will continue to add more to this list," a post on the company's blog read.
Despite these attempts to deter entrapment, Egyptian authorities arrested six gay men and sentenced them to two years of hard labor, according to Ahram Online. Egyptian authorities found the men on Facebook where they were advertising their apartment "as a location of homosexual activity" for $200 a night.
Authorities reported two of the men were caught "red-handed." Although homosexuality is not illegal in Egypt, it is a taboo and has been prosecuted as debauchery, immorality and contempt of religion.
Another group of eight men were arrested for debauchery earlier in September after a video surfaced of what is considered to be "Egypt's first gay wedding." According to The Guardian, the men are currently on trial.
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