A man is preparing to sue Apple for more than £5million after his wife discovered ‘deleted messages’ he sent to sex workers.
The unfaithful husband claims that Apple’s lack of transparency over deleted messages led to his wife filing for divorce.
Richard, not his real name, is reportedly a middle-aged man from England, and revealed to The Times that he had turned to sex workers in the final years of his marriage. He would contact them via the iMessages app on his iPhone before deleting the incriminating text messages.
However, when his wife went on the family iMac, the messages, dating back several years, appeared despite him thinking he had deleted them.
Within a month she filed for divorce.
He told The Times: “If you are told a post has been deleted, you have a right to believe 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]. My thoughts are that if I could have talked to her rationally and she hadn’t realized it so brutally, I might still be married.”
Richard said the couple had been “very happily married” for more than 20 years and that a “fantastic marriage” was “thrown away or something that a lot of men do, and some women do, but mostly men do.”
He said: ‘Talking to some of my friends, some of them have had affairs – which I consider a much bigger breach of trust – and are still married after they were exposed.
“I think there would have been a way out if the realization hadn’t been so sudden, brutal and disturbing.”
Richard is now taking legal action against the tech giant for the more than £5 million he lost during his divorce and through legal costs. He claims that the company does not make it clear that deleted messages can appear on other Apple devices even after they are deleted. on the phone.
In addition to the financial loss, Richard said the effect on his health had been dramatic.
“I was taking very strong beta blockers 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 it’s all because Apple told me my messages were deleted when they weren’t.
‘If the message had said, “These messages have been deleted on this device,” that would have been a clue, or “These messages have been deleted on this device only” that would have been even better.”
Richard is represented by the London law firm Rosenblatt and wants to file a class action lawsuit on a ‘no-win, no-fee’ basis.
Rosenblatt’s Simon Walton said: ‘Apple had not been clear with users about what happens to messages they send, receive and, most importantly, delete.
“In many cases, the iPhone informs the user that messages have been deleted, but as we’ve seen, that’s untrue and misleading because they are still found on other linked devices – something Apple doesn’t tell its users.”
Metro.co.uk has contacted Apple for comment.
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