Gay athletes set to compete at this year’s Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina have been granted enhanced privacy features for their Grindr accounts. Grindr is a free dating app targeted at the LGBTQ community, with the organisation having announced a swathe of new features for the upcoming Games.

Olympians have begun descending on the northern Italian city of Milan, as well as the popular ski town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, with the 25th edition of the Winter Olympics set to get underway on Friday. Over 100 medals will be on offer, with Norway boasting the most golds from the previous edition in China four years ago.

Away from the competition, though, steps have been put in place by Grindr to protect the anonymity of gay athletes for the duration of the Olympics. The features are typically reserved for paying premium customers, including the ability to hide their profile in certain locations, send disappearing messages and banning screenshots of profiles.

In the announcement, Grindr said: “When the Olympics come around, athletes face a level of global attention that doesn’t exist anywhere else — on the podium and off. For gay athletes, especially those who aren’t out or who come from countries where being gay is dangerous or illegal, that visibility creates real safety risks.

“Grindr shows users who are nearby and how far away they are. In most contexts, that’s useful. In the Olympic Village, where thousands of athletes are packed into a small area, those same features may become a liability. Someone outside the Village could browse profiles inside it. Distance data could be used to pinpoint someone’s exact location. And simply appearing on Grindr tells the world something about a person’s identity that, in more than 60 countries, remains a criminal offence.”

It’s the third Olympics in a row that Grindr has taken such measures, having done so for the 2022 Winter and 2024 Summer Games in Beijing and Paris, respectively. The opening ceremony takes place at San Siro in Milan on Friday, with performances from Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli. The Games will run until February 22, with the closing ceremony taking place in fellow northern Italian city, Verona.