Shares in Pinterest popped on Tuesday after a market tracker reported that the online bulletin board surpassed Snapchat to become the third most used social media platform in the US.

Pinterest's user base grew slightly more than nine percent to 82.4 million US users last year, topping Snapchat's 80.2 million users, according to the research firm eMarketer.

The growth spurt would make Pinterest the number three US social platform behind Facebook and its Instagram unit.

"While Snapchat has a young core audience that it caters to, Pinterest has a more universal appeal, and it's made significant gains in a wide range of age groups," said eMarketer analyst Nazmul Islam.

Shares in San Francisco-based Pinterest ended the formal trading day up about 10 percent.

The market tracking firm expected Pinterest to be more popular among US users in the years ahead, with the online bulletin board's lead on the image-centric messaging service widening through the end of 2023.

With its share offering, Pinterest got off to a flying start on Wall Street early last year in the market debut for the visual discovery service.

Pinterest, launched in 2010, is a virtual bulletin board platform, with users decorating their boards with pictures showcasing interests including food, fashion, travel and lifestyle.

It also enables users to link to online shopping and other services to find items they have "pinned."

Tinder, Grindr accused of illegally sharing user data
Oslo (AFP) Jan 14, 2020 - Popular dating apps like Tinder and Grindr are sharing the personal data of their users to third parties in breach of EU regulations, a Norwegian consumer rights group said Tuesday.

A new report by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) details how Grindr, which markets itself as the "world's largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people," shares the GPS data, IP addresses, ages and genders of its users with a multitude of third-party companies to help them improve advert targeting.

According to the government-funded non-profit organisation, the sharing of this data implicitly discloses users' sexual orientations.

The report, titled "Out of Control", examines the collection and use of personal data by 10 popular apps and concludes that the advertising industry is "systematically breaking the law".

"Every time you open an app like Grindr, advertisement networks get your GPS location, device identifiers and even the fact that you use a gay dating app," Austrian activist Max Schrems said in a statement by the NCC.

"This is an insane violation of users' EU privacy rights," Schrems said.

The dating app Tinder is also accused of sharing user data with at least 45 companies owned by the Match Group, which operates a dating website of the same name.

The report also criticised other applications, such as Qibla Finder, which orients Muslims towards Mecca for prayer; Clue and MyDays used for monitoring fertility periods; and the children's app My Talking Tom 2.

Some 20 months since the EU's General Data Protection Regulation took effect in May 2018, "consumers are still pervasively tracked and profiled online," the report said.

Users "have no way of knowing which entities process their data and how to stop them," it added.

"Consumers have no meaningful ways to resist or otherwise protect themselves from the effects of profiling (including) different forms of discrimination and exclusion," the statement said.

The NCC, lodged complaints against Grindr and five of its partners with Norway's data protection agency.

Grindr, which is owned by Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group told The New York Times that it could not comment on a report that it had not seen.

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Tinder, Grindr accused of illegally sharing user data
Oslo (AFP) Jan 14, 2020
Popular dating apps like Tinder and Grindr are sharing the personal data of their users to third parties in breach of EU regulations, a Norwegian consumer rights group said Tuesday. A new report by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) details how Grindr, which markets itself as the "world's largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people," shares the GPS data, IP addresses, ages and genders of its users with a multitude of third-party companies to help them improve advert targeting ... read more