diff --git a/sherlock_project/sherlock.py b/sherlock_project/sherlock.py
index f78d4b8c..ab7d9937 100644
--- a/sherlock_project/sherlock.py
+++ b/sherlock_project/sherlock.py
@@ -136,6 +136,9 @@ def get_response(request_future, error_type, social_network):
     except requests.exceptions.RequestException as err:
         error_context = "Unknown Error"
         exception_text = str(err)
+    except UnicodeError as err:
+        error_context = "Encoding Error"
+        exception_text = str(err)
 
     return response, error_context, exception_text
 
diff --git a/tests/test_unicode.py b/tests/test_unicode.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..fa6e3a30
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/test_unicode.py
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+"""Tests for handling usernames with special/unicode characters."""
+
+from concurrent.futures import Future
+
+from sherlock_project.sherlock import get_response
+
+
+def _make_future_with_exception(exc):
+    """Create a Future that raises the given exception."""
+    future = Future()
+    future.set_exception(exc)
+    return future
+
+
+def test_get_response_handles_unicode_decode_error():
+    """Regression test for issue #2730.
+
+    Usernames with special characters (e.g. 'Émile') can trigger a
+    UnicodeDecodeError inside the requests library during redirect
+    handling. This must not crash the program.
+    """
+    future = _make_future_with_exception(
+        UnicodeDecodeError("utf-8", b"\xe9", 0, 1, "invalid continuation byte")
+    )
+    response, error_context, exception_text = get_response(
+        request_future=future,
+        error_type=["status_code"],
+        social_network="TestSite",
+    )
+    assert response is None
+    assert error_context == "Encoding Error"
+    assert "utf-8" in exception_text
+
+
+def test_get_response_handles_unicode_encode_error():
+    """UnicodeEncodeError should also be caught (subclass of UnicodeError)."""
+    future = _make_future_with_exception(
+        UnicodeEncodeError("ascii", "É", 0, 1, "ordinal not in range(128)")
+    )
+    response, error_context, exception_text = get_response(
+        request_future=future,
+        error_type=["status_code"],
+        social_network="TestSite",
+    )
+    assert response is None
+    assert error_context == "Encoding Error"
+    assert "ascii" in exception_text