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His case continues to shock Britain Steven Port, of the first serial killer who found and killed his victims through a popular dating app, Grindr.
Because he can Port, 46, has already been sentenced to life in prison for four murders, however, new, shocking testimonies come to light about the serial killer – so creepy that a few days ago the London Metropolitan Police forced to apologize publicly to relatives and friends of victims of Port.
And this is because in the beginning, before the perpetrator was even arrested, in 2015, the Their deaths were attributed to “individual mistakes” of drug overdose and were not classified as murders, so they were not investigated as homicides and Port continues to sexually assault other men.
Eventually, after years of investigations, it was revealed that Port was killing his victims with lethal doses of drugs, specifically GHB, with the result that the files were reopened and the Metropolitan Police re-investigated the murders of four young men, aged 21 to 25.
In early November, a Port neighbor testified, according to British media, that the killer was suspected of having pedophile tendencies.
Ryan Edwards revealed to investigators that he had a friendly relationship with Port, who often invited him to meet them. his new companions. “They were very young, 16 or 17 years old, very close to the age of consent“, he said.
“I wondered if he had pedophile tendencies, but I had no evidence. He had an insatiable appetite for dating young people and always impressed me that he was capable of meeting so many. “It’s not that you had any great personality,” Edwards said. who pointed out that he did not know that Port was catching his victims through Grindr.
The neighbor also testified that he had seen it done at Port’s house drug use, with the serial killer assuring him that “it was for personal use.”
According to Edwards, Port had confessed to him that often targeted young people from a difficult family environment, vulnerable people who needed to be hosted.
Some of his friends also testified to the police Port’s first victim, Anthony Walgate, accusing the police of “wrong reasoning and prejudice in their conclusions”.
For its part, Scotland Yard did admit that it had made mistakes during the preliminary investigation. For example, when Walgate was found dead on the street outside his home by a serial killer, and despite multiple suspicious indications, police treated the incident as an individual drug overdose and not as a possible murder.
A friend of Walgate, the China Duning complains that authorities told her that Walgate was “young and gay, so he did drugs.” Another of his friends, Keira Brennan, also believes that there was an “unconscious bias of the Police because of Walgate’s sexuality”.
The highly controversial gay dating app
Grindr is a mobile dating app that allows gay men, in particular, to spot other men in the area where they are and get in touch with them. With more than six million monthly users in over 200 countries by 2020, Grindr is the most popular gay dating app. The application is basically free, however the paid version allows even more features.
However, Grindr has been facing a huge one for a few weeks now 8 8.5 million fine for illegally selling users’ personal data in advertising.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority plans to impose a fine of NOK 100 million or about 10% of the app’s estimated global revenue.
“Our preliminary conclusion is that the violations are serious.” The Norwegian authority added that the breach of personal data was revealed last January, when the Norwegian Consumer Council filed three complaints against Grindr for disclosing personal information to advertisers, including details about the user’s location, age, gender and others that could reveal his sexuality.
“Users could be targeted through this information in countries where homosexuality is illegal”, noted then o Tobias Judin, head of the international office of the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, emphatically stressed that “if someone finds out that users are gay and knows their movements, they can get hurt. “We try to make these applications and services understand that this approach – not to inform users, not to obtain a valid consent for the disclosure of their data – is completely unacceptable.”
From his side, In a statement to the New York Times, a Grindr spokesman said he had obtained “valid, legal consent from all” users. in Europe on various occasions and that certainly “the approach to user privacy is top notch” among the other applications. “We are constantly improving our protection policies in line with ongoing laws and regulations, and we look forward to a fruitful dialogue with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority,” he added.
The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out guidelines for the collection, processing and disclosure of personal information in the European Union but also in “non-European” Norway.
However, the European Center for Digital Rights claims that the alleged “consent” obtained by Grindr was not valid because the users were not properly informed and the consent was not clear enough.
The popular dating app has until February 15, 2022 to respond to the case.