Grindr is visited a quarter of a million times a month in parliament

PinkNews logo surrounded by illustrated images including a rainbow, unicorn, PN sign and pride flag.

More than a quarter of a million attempts to access Grindr are made a month on the parliamentary estate, according to new figures.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the Mirror revealed the figures, based on several months last year.

The FOI found that 272,000 attempts to access Grindr had been made in a single month.

The figures log all the websites visited by MPs, Lords and their staff, and guests to the parliamentary estate who have been given access to the internet.

Employees and visitors are banned from accessing websites such as Grindr, Tinder and other dating apps on the estate.

Explicit sites, such as porn, are also banned from internal computers.

Among the other banned sites users tried to visit were Fab Swingers, Swinging Heaven, Gaydar and YouPorn, each registering hundreds of hits.

There were also a thousand attempts to view Tinder, a fraction of the number made to Grindr.

In replying to the Mirror’s FOI request, the House of Commons Information Rights and Information Security Service: “The information below covers both Houses and all users of the parliamentary network e.g. MPs, Members of the House of Lords, their staff, staff of the House Administrations and non-parliamentary network users participating in parliamentary business.

“The data also includes users of the guest wi-fi service from May 2016.”

A Parliamentary spokesman said: “All adult websites are blocked on Parliament’s computer network. The vast majority of ‘attempts’ to access them are not deliberate.

“The data shows ‘requests’ to access websites, not visits to them. Pop-up adverts make up a significant number of these ‘attempts’, which the computer user would not even have been aware of.

“There are 8,500 computers on the Parliamentary Network, which are used by MPs, Peers, their staff and staff of both Houses. This data also covers personal devices used when logged on to Parliament’s guest Wi-Fi.”

Grindr recently introduced its own set of emojis for users.

Comments (0)

MyPinkNews members are invited to comment on articles to discuss the content we publish, or debate issues more generally. Please familiarise yourself with our community guidelines to ensure that our community remains a safe and inclusive space for all.

Loading Comments