Man plans to sue Apple after deleted messages reveal his infidelity to his wife

A man is taking legal action against Apple after his wife discovered, thanks to deleted messages, that he was unfaithful to her. Richard—not his real name—had turned to sex workers, with whom he communicated through iMessage installed on his iPhone, The Times reports.

To leave no trace of his infidelity, the man deleted the conversations on his cell phone. However, when his wife logged into the same app on the family iMac, she was presented with the latest message that had been sent to the iPhone of another person, who turned out to be a prostitute.

The woman managed to access the messages that her husband sent for years to various prostitutes, and that he believed he had completely deleted. After discovering her infidelity, she filed for divorce from her.

Richard, a father who lives in the United Kingdom and chooses to preserve his identity, alleges that Apple does not specify to its customers that sent messages can be viewed on other linked devices, and even less so after they have been deleted. “If you are told that a message has been deleted, you have the right to believe that it has been deleted,” he said.

The man sued the company in order to recover the money he lost due to the divorce, plus legal costs. Furthermore, he claims that he began to have health problems due to the stress caused by the breakup of his marriage. To do this, he turned to the London law firm Rosenblatt and is now seeking to launch a class action lawsuit. Richard insists that if there are more affected by Apple’s confusing policy, “then that’s a billion-pound claim and it’s probably a global situation.”

In this context, Simon Walton of Rosenblatt confirms that, “in many cases, the iPhone informs the user that the messages have been deleted but, as we have seen, this is not true and is misleading, because they are still found on other devices.” linked, something that Apple does not tell its users. Walton said that the firm has tried to contact Apple, but without success.

“This strongly suggests that Apple is concerned enough about this problem to hope that by ignoring it it will go away, or they simply don’t care about the rights of their users,” he concluded.