Husband Sues Apple For $6M After Wife Discovers Texts With Sex Workers He Thought He Deleted
A cheating husband is suing Apple after his wife saw his previously deleted iMessage texts to prostitutes.
The unnamed man from England is suing Apple for £5 million (~US$6 million) after his wife discovered the deleted messages on his phone through their family's iMac computer, according to The Times. The messages he thought he had completely wiped were apparently synced to another Apple device.
"If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it's deleted," he told the outlet.
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After his wife found out about his cheating, she filed for divorce, which cost him more than £5 million. Now, he wants Apple to take on his loss.
"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 better," he argued.
He added that had the messages been completely deleted on all devices, he would still be married by now.
"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 realization of it, I might still be married," he said.
"Divorce is an extraordinarily stressful process, and you have children and family dynamics."
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Meanwhile, the middle-aged businessman's representative, Simon Walton of London law firm Rosenblatt, told the Telegraph, "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."
It appears that there were other recorded incidents of women finding out about their men's infidelity via iMessage.
In 2023, a Reddit user posted about discovering that her boyfriend cheated on her after the latter broke his phone and asked her to have it repaired.
"As I was doing that, I used his iCloud to recover his data and put it into his new phone. When you do that, iMessages are retrieved too," she wrote.
"'Your **** was good last night.' A flood of texts came in on the notification bar from various times. It was heartbreak I'm still hurt. I'm still hurt. I didn't want to believe it, and as he arrived, I gave him the phone and didn't say a word. I attempted to be okay."
Per the Daily Mail, unfaithful partners using an iPhone could get exposed through these features: iCloud syncing to other accounts, recorded locations, hidden apps, recorded screen time and battery drain, autofill, frequently used emojis and deleted items.
