A man has initiated a $6 million lawsuit against Apple after his wife discovered messages he had sent to s*x workers on their family iMac.
The anonymous middle-aged businessman, hailing from England, alleges that Apple’s “lack of transparency” contributed to the demise of his marriage.
It appears that this man may not be accustomed to taking responsibility for his actions. Speaking to the Times, he confessed to engaging with s*x workers via the iMessage app during the final years of his marriage.
Despite his attempts to delete the messages, which dated back several years, they resurfaced due to iCloud and Apple’s connected devices feature.
Eventually, his wife, with whom he shared over two decades of marriage, stumbled upon the messages while using the same app on the family iMac. Within just a month, she filed for divorce, as reported by the news outlet.
In the interview, he said: “If you are told a message is deleted, you are entitled to believe it’s deleted. 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.”
The man added: “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 even better.”
Well, the man is pursuing legal action for more than £5 million ($6.3m), which he claims he lost in his divorce and through legal costs.
Simon Walton, who is representing the businessman, 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,” he added.