A businessman from England is suing Apple after his wife found out “deleted” messages he sent to sex workers on their family iMac. The messages, which he believed were “deleted permanently” from his iPhone, led to his wife filing for divorce, reported The Times.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, had been using iMessage to communicate with sex workers, claiming he had deleted the evidence from his iPhone. However, the messages were still accessible on the iMac due to the synchronisation of the family’s devices with the same Apple ID.
He claimed that Apple did not inform users that deleting a message on one device does not remove it from all linked devices. “If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted,” he told the outlet.
The man’s wife found the messages and filed for a divorce, a move that has cost him over 5 million pounds, said The Times. He described the divorce as “painful and raw,” stating that a more rational conversation could have saved his marriage if the messages hadn’t been discovered so brutally.
“If I had been able to talk to her rationally and she had not had such a brutal realisation of it, I might still be married,” he explained. “It was a very brutal way of finding out [for my wife],” he said.
The man is now suing Apple for 5 million pounds and is seeking to turn his lawsuit into a class-action suit for others who might have faced similar situations.
He explained that the lack of clarity from Apple about how message deletion works led to this situation. “In my opinion, it’s all because Apple told me my messages were deleted when they weren’t. If the message had said, ‘These messages are deleted on this device’, that would have been a clue, or ‘These messages are deleted on this device only’ that would have been even better.”
His lawyer, Simon Walton told The Telegraph, “Apple had not been clear with users as to what happens to messages they send and receive and, importantly, delete.”
Mr Walton said that in many cases, the iPhone informs the user that “messages have been deleted” which he claims wasn’t true and was “misleading because they are still found on other linked devices – something Apple doesn’t tell its users.” He said he was “eager to hear from other Apple customers who have experienced similar issues.”
