A businessman plans to sue Apple after his wife discovered "deleted" messages he had sent to sex workers on another device.
The man, reportedly a middle-aged Englishman, alleges that Apple's lack of transparency regarding deleted messages led to his wife's decision to file for divorce.
He told The Times that he had turned to prostitutes in the final years of his marriage, using the iMessage app on his iPhone to contact them before deleting the texts.
However, his wife eventually found these messages on the family's iMac computer, including messages from several years ago that he thought he had erased.
“If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted,” he said in an interview with The Times.
“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 continued: “Divorce is an extraordinarily stressful process, especially when you have children and complex 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 is now pursuing legal action against the company, seeking more than £5 million in damages for his divorce and legal costs. He claims Apple fails to clearly inform customers that deleted messages can still appear on other Apple devices.
Simon Walton, from the London law firm Rosenblatt representing the businessman, told The Telegraph, “Apple has not been clear with users about what happens to messages they send, receive, and delete.”
He added, “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 added.
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