A man is set to sue Apple for more than £5 million after his wife discovered “deleted messages” he sent to sex workers.
Cheating husband claims Apple’s lack of transparency about deleted messages led to his wife filing for divorce.
Richard, not his real name, is said to be a middle-aged man from England who told The Times he had turned to prostitutes in the last years of his marriage. He contacted them via iMessages on his iPhone before deleting the incriminating texts.
However, when his wife switched to the family iMac, messages dating back several years appeared even though he thought he had deleted them.
She filed for divorce within a month.
He told The Times: “If you are told that a message has been deleted, you are entitled to believe that it has been deleted.
“It’s all quite painful and still quite raw. It was a very brutal way to find out [for my wife]. I think if I had been able to talk to her rationally and she hadn’t been so brutally aware of it, I might still be married.’
Richard said the couple had been “very happily married” for more than 20 years and that a “great marriage” had been “thrown away or something that a lot of men do and some women do, but mostly men”.
He said: “When I spoke to some of my friends, some of them had affairs – which I consider a much bigger breach of trust – and still stayed married after they were found out.
“I think it would be the way to go if the realization wasn’t so sudden and brutal and upsetting.”
Richard is now taking legal action against the tech giant for more than £5m he lost in the divorce and legal costs, claiming the company did not make it clear that deleted messages could appear on other Apple devices even after they have been deleted. on phone.
In addition to the financial loss, Richard said the impact on his health was dramatic.
“I was on really strong beta-blockers to try to reduce my panic attacks,” he said.
“I really thought I was going to have a heart attack. Divorce is an extremely stressful process and you have children and family dynamics. In my opinion this is all because Apple told me my messages were deleted when they weren’t.
‘If the message said “These messages are deleted on this device” that would be a clue, or “These messages are only deleted on this device” would be even better.
Richard is represented by London-based law firm Rosenblatt and intends to launch the class action on a no-win, no-fee basis.
Rosenblatt’s Simon Walton said: “Apple has not been clear to users about what happens to the messages they send, receive and, importantly, delete.
“In many cases, the iPhone informs the user that the messages have been deleted, but as we’ve seen, that’s not true and it’s misleading because they’re still on other connected devices — something Apple doesn’t tell its users.”
Metro.co.uk has asked Apple for comment.
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