LOS ANGELES (AP) — An AIDS health care group is defending an ad campaign in Los Angeles that links popular dating apps with the spread of sexual transmitted diseases. 
 
 The AIDS Healthcare Foundation targets Tinder, a location-based dating app and Grindr, a similar site for gay men, in billboards and bus benches that are aimed at reminding users about the risks of casual sex and offering free STD tests. 
 
 "In many ways, location-based mobile dating apps are becoming a digital bathhouse for millennials wherein the next sexual encounter can literally just be a few feet away — as well as the next STD," Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior public health director for the foundation, said in a statement. 
 
 Billboards show a silhouette of a man labeled "Tinder" face-to-face with a woman's silhouette labeled "chlamydia." A silhouette of a man labeled "Grindr" faces a male silhouette labeled "gonorrhea." 
 
 Reaction from the dating apps was swift. 
 
 Within two hours of the first billboard going up, Grindr pulled commercials that the foundation pays for on the dating site to promote free STD testing, the foundation said. 
 
 In less than 24 hours, Tinder sent a cease and desist letter claiming the campaign falsely associates the dating app with the spread of venereal diseases. 
 
 "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 organization," a lawyer for Tinder wrote. 
 
 The foundation sent a letter to Tinder denying that it disparaged the company and saying it would not remove the reference to the app. 
 
 The campaign is intended to draw attention to rising STD rates that the foundation said coincides with the popularity of the sites that make hook-ups easier, said Michael Weinstein, the foundation's president. 
 
 "It's logical, if you can be hooked up with someone in an urban area within minutes," he said, "of course you're going to have to more STDs." 
 
 Email messages sent to Tinder and Grindr for comment were not immediately returned. 
 
 The signs are currently on a dozen billboards in Los Angeles and 45 bus benches, Weinstein said. 
 
 The Los Angeles-based foundation, which provides health care to HIV and AIDS patients and free sexual disease testing, plans to also put them up in New York City, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ||||| LOS ANGLES (CBSLA.com) — A new billboard has lots of folks in Los Angeles buzzing about sex, safe sex, online hookups and apps. 
 
 The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is taking the popular online dating apps Tinder and Grindr to task — suggesting their users are more susceptible to STD’s like chlamydia and gonorrhea. 
 
 One of the billboard’s is strategically placed. KCAL9’s Jennifer Kastner said the billboard is a few blocks from Tinder’s Beverly Boulevard headquarters. 
 
 Tinder could hardly miss the sign. The billboards are also accusing the sites of promoting a hook up culture. 
 
 “I saw it and I was like yep, that’s what it is now,” says Rachel Cross who said she was an early Tinder user. 
 
 “Tinder’s great for meeting people that just want to have sex,” said a man name Nick. 
 
 Tinder is reportedly fighting back. They allegedly sent a cease and desist letter to the AHF. 
 
 West Hollywood’s John Demille was diagnosed with AIDS several years ago. 
 
 “I live with AIDS,” he says. 
 
 Demille is all in favor of the billboards. 
 
 “I think the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has to do what they have to do to keep all young people safe that are doing these new apps now,” Demille said. 
 
 The foundation claims more people are getting STDs because more people are using these apps — the senior director even saying they make casual sex as easy as ordering a pizza. 
 
 “Some of the people that message me don’t want to be safe,” says Grindr user Brandon Wild, “but that’s in me to be safe.” 
 
 Kastner reached out to both Tinder and Grindr for an official response, but has not heard back.
– In a move Engadget says will help the company "save face," Tinder has added links to an STD testing locator on its dating app and site, ending a monthslong fight with a nonprofit provider of HIV health care and prevention services, Reuters reports. The new locator powered by Healthvana can be accessed via a link in the site's health and safety section, as well as in the FAQ on the mobile app. "Regular testing is critical to staying on top of your health and helping prevent the spread of STDs," the site reads before directing users to the locator, the addition of which Reuters notes was key in getting the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to pull its aggressive ad campaign against Tinder. That campaign, which Engadget notes was designed to get users to seek out testing for possible venereal diseases, has included giant billboards erected in LA and NYC that link Tinder and gay social network Grindr to such STDs as chlamydia and gonorrhea. Now that Tinder has included the Healthvana locator, the foundation says it will take the billboards down and nix any ads bad-mouthing Tinder. "While the CDC … has never identified any connection that supports the idea that Tinder usage correlates with, let alone causes, an increase in STDs, we're of course in favor of organizations that provide public education resources on the topic," Tinder said in a statement Thursday, per Reuters. (In a recent magazine profile, Tinder's CEO talks marriage, sexting, and … living with his parents.)