What happened to the priest whose phone data outed his private life could happen to anyone

A Catholic priest allegedly downloaded a popular gay dating app onto his smartphone years ago, perhaps assuming it would keep his secret.

This week, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill stepped down from his job as top administrator for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops after a newsletter said it used his location data from the Grindr app to determine he was frequenting gay bars.

What stands out about this particular incident isn’t that it’s improbable, but that it’s the exact worst-case scenario privacy experts have been warning about for a long time. Personal data is collected, sold and bought by a tangle of app developers, data brokers and advertising companies with little oversight. The biggest shock may be that it didn’t happen sooner.