French man to sue Uber over app revealing his affair to his wife

13 Feb 2017

Person using Uber app. Image: Syafiq Adnan/Shutterstock

An alleged bug within Uber’s app has resulted in one French man taking legal action against the company after it revealed the location of his infidelity to his wife.

Uber is no stranger to court cases, but now it is facing a legal challenge of a different kind: an annoyed French man.

According to the BBC, the man claims that, despite his best efforts to hide the fact that he was having an affair from his wife, the Uber app revealed the location of his infidelity on her phone, which he had booked the cars on.

Despite stating that he used her iPhone and then logged out of the app to prevent any notifications appearing, he claims a bug within the app meant that the notifications still popped up when he arrived at his lover’s location.

Reports from the newspaper Le Figaro claim that the man, now divorced, is seeking to file a lawsuit against Uber worth €45m, despite receiving no confirmation of a value from the man’s lawyer, David-André Darmon.

“My client was the victim of a bug in an application,” he said. “There’s a function to disconnect, but the session was not disconnected and the bug has caused him problems in his private life.”

Put claim to the test

As part of the report, Le Figaro conducted its own experiment to see if the man’s claim – that, even when logged out of the app, you would still receive notifications when you reach your destination – was true. As it turns out, prior to December, there was a glitch within the iPhone build of the app that would have allowed for this to happen.

The same problem does not appear to have occurred on the Android version of the app.

Uber has not commented on the details of the case, but has said that its users’ personal privacy was one of its highest concerns.

Person using Uber app. Image: Syafiq Adnan/Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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