Tinder fights STD ad campaign in US Published duration 29 September 2015

image copyright Aids Healthcare Foundation image caption The controversial image also appears on the foundation's website

Tinder is calling for the removal of an advertising campaign by an Aids awareness group, which linked the dating app with sexually transmitted diseases.

The Aids Healthcare Foundation also named gay dating app Grindr in a series of posters in the US.

It said that location-based dating apps had become a "digital bath house" for sexually transmitted infections because they facilitated casual sex.

The foundation is based in Los Angeles.

Posters are currently up in Los Angeles, and there are plans to display them in New York, Miami and Florida.

"Mobile dating apps are rapidly altering the sexual landscape by making casual sex as easily available as ordering a pizza," said Whitney Engeran-Cordova, a senior director at the AHF.

"In many ways, location-based mobile dating apps are becoming a digital bath house for millennials wherein the next sexual encounter can literally just be a few feet away—as well as the next STD."

However, lawyers acting for Tinder say the group has its own agenda.

"These unprovoked and wholly unsubstantiated accusations are made to irreparably damage Tinder's reputation in an attempt to encourage others to take an HIV test offered by your organisation," they said.