With a £5 million lawsuit, a British businessman alleges that his wife found out about his infidelity and filed for divorce as a result of Apple’s lack of transparency over erased communications.
The unidentified middle-aged English man was able to see his deleted texts with sex workers on the family’s iMac computer even though he had erased them from his iPhone, according to a local news brand on Friday.
He admitted to news media that he had been with prostitutes during the latter years of his marriage and that he would communicate with them using the iPhone’s iMessage programme before deleting the messages.
But finally, his wife found the messages on the family’s iMac computer, along with some older ones he thought he had erased.
Citing the Times newspaper, he said “If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted.”
“It’s all quite painful and quite raw still. It was a very brutal way of finding out [for my wife].
“My thoughts are 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 argued that Apple’s messaging system is misleading, as it implies that deleted messages are permanently erased, when in fact they can still be retrieved on other linked devices.
Continuing, he stated “Divorce is an extraordinarily stressful process and you have children and family dynamics.
“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,” he added.
He is currently suing the firm to recover the more than £5 million he lost during his divorce and associated legal fees. He alleges the company fails to disclose to users the possibility that deleted communications could resurface on other Apple products.
In a statement, the businessman’s attorney, Simon Walton of the London legal firm Rosenblatt, stated that “Apple had not been clear with users as to what happens to messages they send and receive and, importantly, delete.”
Adding, “In many cases, the iPhone informs the user that messages have been deleted but, as we have seen, that isn’t true and is misleading because they are still found on other linked devices — something Apple doesn’t tell its users.”
“I would be eager to hear from other Apple customers who have experienced similar issues,” he disclosed.
