Man sues Grindr app for harassment

NEW YORK CITY — A New York man is suing gay dating app Grindr after an ex-boyfriend used a fake profile to harass him at home and work. An appeals court will have to decide if the app can be held accountable for what its users do.

Matthew Herrick says for months he couldn't go to the restaurant where he waited tables -- or his home -- without men he didn't know approaching him for sex or drugs.

Attorneys Carrie Goldberg and Tor Ekeland are representing the Manhattan resident in a lawsuit against Grindr, a gay dating app. "This was a life or death matter. They would follow him into the bathroom at work, they wouldn't take for no an answer," Goldberg told WCBS. Ekeland adds that, "At one point, within four minutes, six people came up to him."

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Herrick says his ex-boyfriend created fake profiles of him and arranged sex dates with more than 1,400 men. He further alleges he alerted Grindr to the problem. "And all they ever did was send back an auto reply: 'thank you for your complaint,'" said Ekeland.

In court papers, Herrick said he filed 50 complaints with Grindr and the company never did anything. The lawsuit calls on Grindr to implement technology to stop this kind of harassment. Herrick's lawyers say Grindr claims it couldn't stop the impersonating profiles, or the location tracking.

The case was dismissed by a federal court in 2017. Now an appeals court is hearing the case.

Alfred Ng is a cybersecurity reporter for CNet, who says, "The argument here though is that many websites do have this ability to protect their users. You know, Facebook, if somebody's bothering you there, has an impersonating profile of you pretending to be me or you or anything like that, they can take that down."

Ng says it's hard to sue tech companies because of a 1996 law that makes internet services immune from what users do on their website. "We need to think very carefully about what's going on when we're being tracked by our phones every second of the day," said Ekeland. Lawyers say the laws need to be revised for everyone's safety.

Herrick filed the lawsuit against Grindr nearly two years ago.

CNN/WCBS