When you delete texts sent in iMessage, you might think they’re gone forever — but one (now ex) husband found out this isn’t always the case in possibly the worst way.
As reported by The Times, the husband in question had arranged to meet prostitutes via iMessage on his iPhone, and had deleted the incriminating texts from his device, believing this would cover up his infidelity. However, his wife opened up iMessage on the iMac the family shared and found all the texts — revealing years' worth of messages to prostitutes. She filed for divorce shortly after this realization.
Now, the husband is looking to get £5 million in damages from Apple, for the cost of legal fees, money lost in the divorce, and emotional harm from it. He tells The Times “If you are told a message is deleted you are entitled to believe it's deleted.” He has reportedly been put on beta blockers to reduce panic attacks from the divorce brought on by his infidelity.
“I genuinely thought I was going to have a heart attack. 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.” London-based law firm Rosenblatt is looking to make a class action lawsuit by pulling in other iPhone users who have suffered from the same blunder.
What went wrong?
Aside from the texts themselves, which are the first major mistakes the man made, Apple’s own support document for deleting messages notes “If you use Messages in iCloud, deleting a message or conversation on your Mac deletes it from all your devices where Messages in iCloud is on”. It seems, from this context, that the man did not have his iCloud linked to the device. This was likely an intentional move to hide his infidelity but it ended up being the very thing that gave his shenanigans away to his ex-wife.
Deleting messages only removes them from the device you are on when you have not linked your iCloud to devices. It also will not remove messages from the device you are in communication with.
Rosenblatt’s Simon Walton claims “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.” Though Apple technically does inform users of this, you need to look into the right place to get that information. It is unclear how likely the man is to get any sort of payout from this but his law firm clearly thinks the suit holds some weight. Apple has not yet responded publicly to this case.
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