Usually, deleting messages from your phone brings a sense of satisfaction and relief, knowing they are gone for good. However, for this UK man, that wasn't the case. Despite deleting the messages from his phone, they remained accessible on the family iMac. His wife discovered them, leading to a costly divorce.
Now, the man is suing Apple claiming there is a major flaw in their security and privacy features.
The UK man's wife had discovered the 'deleted' text messages sent to sex workers on another device linked to the iMac. The man has blamed Apple's lack of transparency leading to the collapse of his marriage.
“If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted,” the man, on condition of anonymity, was quoted by The Times.
He said it led to his "painful and raw" divorce.
“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 added.
He is seeking 5 million pounds in damages from Apple.
According to The Times, the man used iMessage to communicate with sex workers. He alleged that Apple did not inform users that deleting messages from one synced device would not delete from other synced devices.
He also said that a more sensible conversation might have saved his marriage if messages hadn't been discovered so dramatically. "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 said.
"It was a very brutal way of finding out," he added.
Meanwhile, the man's attorney, Simon Walton, said that “Apple had not been clear with users as to what happens to messages they send and receive and, importantly, delete,” he was quoted by Telegraph.
“This is misleading because these messages are still found on other linked devices — something Apple doesn’t tell its users,” he said.
Walton is on the hunt to find more such Apple users, who have had similar experiences.
