A British businessman is suing Apple for £5 million, claiming that the company’s lack of transparency over deleted messages led to his wife discovering his infidelity and subsequently filing for divorce.
According to the Times on Friday, the middle-aged man from England, who remains anonymous, had deleted messages he sent to sex workers on his iPhone, but they were still accessible on the family’s iMac computer.
He told The Times he had turned to prostitutes in the final years of his marriage, and would contact them through the iMessage app on his iPhone before deleting the texts.
But the messages were eventually discovered by his wife on the family’s iMac computer, along with messages going back several years he believed he had wiped.
He told the Times newspaper, “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.
He added: “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 is now pursuing legal action against the company for the more than £5 million he lost in his divorce and legal costs, claiming the company does not make it clear to customers that deleted messages can appear on other Apple devices.
The lawyer, Simon Walton, from London law firm Rosenblatt which is representing the businessman in a statement said that “Apple had not been clear with users as to what happens to messages they send and receive and, importantly, delete”.
“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,” he said.
“I would be eager to hear from other Apple customers who have experienced similar issues,” he added.
