X-Mode sent multiple emails to Silverberg, which he provided to The , offering at least $100,000 annually for SCRUFF’s user data.

“Since your company is already collecting location data, you might be interested in adding X?Mode’s revenue of at least $100,000 annually (Based on your apptopia numbers) on top of what you are already making,” X?Mode’s pitch email in said.

Last July, a high-ranking Catholic priest resigned after a media outlet used location data to link the priest to a gay dating app and tracked his visits to gay bars. There’s no indication that X?Mode was involved in the incident.

Sean O’Brien, the lead researcher at the Yale Privacy Lab, has uncovered several other LGBTQ dating apps that sold location data to X-Mode by looking for apps that used X?Mode’s SDK. (An SDK, which stands for Software Development Kit, is a tool embedded into apps that can be used for data collection.) App developers would install X-Mode’s SDK so the location data broker could collect information directly in exchange for payouts. Continue reading →