An English businessman is suing Apple for £5 million (around $6.3 million) after his wife discovered years of incriminating messages to sex workers that he believed were permanently deleted from his iPhone.
The unnamed man had been communicating with escorts via Apple’s iMessage service and deleting the exchanges. However, the messages remained visible on the family’s shared iMac due to iPhone-Mac syncing under the same Apple ID.
The unsuspecting wife stumbled upon the trail of explicit messages while using the desktop computer – shattering their marriage in what the husband describes as “a very brutal way.”
Though taking responsibility for his infidelity, the man argues Apple misled him by stating the texts were “deleted” without clarifying this applied only to the iPhone itself, not linked devices.
The man, in his argument stated that: “If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted…If the message had said ‘These messages are deleted on this device only,’ that would have been a much clearer indicator.”
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The man claims he might have been able to salvage his marriage through an open conversation if the discovery hadn’t been so abruptly unveiled. Instead, his wife promptly filed for divorce – a bitter split that cost him over £5 million in legal fees, assets and “emotional harm.”
The unnamed man has retained the London firm Rosenblatt to pursue Apple over the costly tech confusion. The lawyers assert iPhone prompts falsely stated messages were deleted when they remained retrievable across Apple’s ecosystem.
The aggrieved ex-husband, now on medication for panic attacks, hopes to expand his case into a class-action lawsuit, potentially involving others caught in similar situations due to Apple’s alleged lack of clarification.
