A British man is ridiculously attempting to sue Apple following a divorce, caused by his wife finding messages to a prostitute he deleted from his iPhone that were still accessible on an iMac.
In the last years of his marriage, a man referred to as “Richard” started to use the services of prostitutes, without his wife’s knowledge. To try and keep the communications secret, he used iMessages on his iPhone, but then deleted the messages.
Despite being careful on his iPhone to cover his tracks, he didn’t count on Apple’s ecosystem automatically synchronizing his messaging history with the family iMac. Apparently, he wasn’t careful enough to use Family Sharing for iCloud, or discrete user accounts on the Mac.
The Times reports the wife saw the message when she opened iMessage on the iMac. She also saw years of messages to prostitutes, revealing a long period of infidelity by her husband.
I knew a guy when I served in the US military who got caught cheating in a semi-related way. He got assigned to a base in a new state and his wife refused to relocate their whole family for the few years he’d be assigned there, so he went by himself, leaving his wife and kids in his home state.
Turns out, he was sexting one of his younger subordinates at work. One of his daughters found out when she tried to use an old tablet and found out his account was still synced to it. She saw all his texts updating in real time.
He was ultra-conservative and didn’t believe in divorce, so he was doing everything he could to save his marriage. His wife forced him to install security cameras in every room of his apartment and banned him from going anywhere after work. She knew his schedule and expected him home immediately after work ended. He was basically on house arrest until his job was done and he could move home.
The last I heard, he told his wife the landlord needed to paint the walls, so he removed all the cameras, dunked them in the bathtub, then played dumb when none of them would work when he set them back up again. He was seen inviting young women over to his apartment after that. So, you know… he didn’t learn his lesson.
I just can’t understand why it’s up to the husband to say no divorce while he cheats? Like what position of power does he have?
Sounds like some cartoon plot. My New Wife: Divorce is Magic.
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Except he used the same account for his prostitute texting device as for the family pc.
It’s simple user error. You can’t have privacy from someone else who shares the same login.I don’t have any Apple devices so I don’t understand why deleting the message from one device doesn’t delete it from another. What is the point of a sync in that case?
Deleting messages from an iPhone WILL delete them from other devices - assuming you’ve opted to let it to do that, and then even still, there may be a delay until the next sync happens.
I’ve deleted messages on my iPhone and they’ll linger on my MacBook for a good while, depending on circumstances. (ie, if the MacBook wasn’t on network when the messages were deleted).
Yep, instant sync is never a guarantee. There still has to be a queue for command messages along with authentication plus authorization of said commands. And just like you said, you must be connected to a network that then can reach their cloud to even receive the command queue.
I run a sync service between multiple Active Directory domains as a result of a merger and the directories haven’t been cutover yet. Along with this sync is a password sync that is normally instant. Most of the times (> 90%), less than a second. Sometimes 3 seconds. Other times? 2 minutes. Even when things are within the same LAN, there’s the possibility of a backed up queue.
So yeah, this is purely on him trusting the sync implicitly and not verifying. In my case, I trust it too but will on occasion have to assist users because it’s not infallible. Karma got him and I have zero sympathy.
I’m not sure about the specifics in the Apple ecosystem but I imagine it’s like an email address that’s connected as IMAP on one main PC, and as POP3 on your phone.
You can download the mails you need to your phone to read them and answer them on the go.
But the mail server is synched to the PC. So deleting stuff on your phone just deletes the messages on your phone, not on the server and not on the PC.You can “delete for all” since one or two years, but the Standard has long been “deleting from this device only”
Nah, it’s more like Dropbox. It’s a multi-way sync between all devices. Dropbox, Google drive and Microsoft one box all have the same kind of problems. Stuff that’s supposed to be deleted ends up not getting deleted, stuff that’s supposed to be overwritten ends up getting multiple copies with conflicts Even though nothing else has any changes staged. It’s totally possible to do it without all that, but there are cost savings are wrapped up in trying to add intelligence in there to make it communicate with the server less.
I don’t really give a rat’s ass about the guy cheating, but if a company is going to drag me into their distributed ecosystem I fully expect deleted things to delete everywhere and stay deleted. This isn’t the first time that they’ve been in the news recently for deleted things reappearing.
IMAP actually deletes an mail for all the clients.
yes, that’s what I wrote.
I use Apple sync on all my devices including my computer and it does delete from one device to another IF you have sync set up properly. And it’s not instantaneous, it happens when the cloud sync happens. When the computer is off or in sleep, it’s not syncing and once it’s woken up, sometimes it takes a minute to sync up. My guess, it was either not set up right or it hadn’t sync’d yet.
Other possibility, he didn’t know about the deleted folder where deleted messages sit for 30 days unless you clear it (like a computer trash can).
While I don’t necessarily agree in this case, you did remind me of something Justice Kirby (an Australia Hugh Court (our highest court) Judge) wrote in his dissent in Carr v Western Australia.^1
“He was a smart alec for whom it is hard to feel much sympathy. But the police were public officials bound to comply with the law. We should uphold the appellant’s rights because doing so is an obligation that is precious for everyone. It is cases like this that test this Court. It is no real test to afford the protection of the law to the clearly innocent, the powerful and the acclaimed.”
^1 232 CLR 138, 188 [170].
I know this wasn’t iMessage per se (altho its par for the course for that curs-ed app) but this serves as a good reminder for posterity.
Its actually one of the issues with iCloud and the signin process because if you do the normal thing trying to sign into your account anywhere outside of AppStore, it automaticaly opts you in to iCloud and its showtime for all your data in terms of transit and restoring it and activating all of the crappy, leaky things like iMessage and Backup in addition to all 500+ apps you have that automatically synced themself the moment you opened and all times you used them if you didn’t de-toggle and delete whatever it shared up to that point
Isn’t messages in iCloud off by default? I feel like I had to actively enable this in a preference panel.
You are mistaken at least as of the present and even a while back. They reset all defaults everytime you log into iCloud, its likely an attempt to discourage logging out
If I have multiple devices synced, and I delete something from one of them, it’s not unreasonable to think it should be deleted from all of them.
For example, a shared calendar item on my phone, tablet and laptop. If I delete it on one, it should be deleted from all of them.
If Apple synced the messages, but not the delete operation, yeah… that’s a problem.
But it’s also on the guy for setting up/not disabling sharing in the first place.
a man referred to as “Richard”
Heh.
it doesn’t sound ridiculous to me. regardless of the backstory, the issue was that he deleted something and it didn’t work. it could have been a password or picture of his balls or something. Apple should pay up
I dont know, the issue reminds me of tech support calls id get back in the day for people who got angry at their ISP when they mixed up IMAP and POP3. Maybe step through exactly how this message service handles copying and deleting before using it to hire prostitutes for years.
No it sounds like he (and you) didn’t understand the technology and thought it acted in a way it didn’t. Expecting Apple to be liable for this is buffoonery.
Does Apple have actual instructions and documentation that explains this? I honestly didn’t know, as I’ve never used iMessage.
Yes, they do.
This article is short on details but basically the situation is that for most of the lifetime of iMessage, you sign in with your Mac and your phone and your iPad and whatever. These messages are not synced. If you sign in on a new device, the old one’s don’t show up. If you delete from one device it has no affect on the other.
Later they introduced iMessage in iCloud , which is an opt in service. iMessage in iCloud, once set up on your devices, allows you to sync your messages amongst these devices by storing these messages in the cloud. This is not enabled by default, probably because security wise it’s probably safer to not store your messages in the cloud.
In the “Tips” app on my iPhone (which is the user guide app), they explicitly state you have to enable it on all of your devices. You can have some set up to store in the cloud and another device just logged in and storing messages locally. This is to give you the flexibility to store all of your messages long term on one or more devices but not on all of them or in the cloud.
I don’t know about you, but I much prefer the option to store my data where I want rather than to be forced to have it in the cloud (and therefore synced) just because some shitty people are too stupid to know how to cover the evidence of their shitty behavior and want to shift blame to anyone but themselves.
Geez, has this dude never watched a crime drama before? If you’re gonna be doing bad shit at LEAST get a burner phone. 🙄🙄🙄
On the one hand, I don’t know that it’s fair to sue a company over your poor understanding of technology, or user error. On the other hand, if he worked for DARPA and was using imessage to talk to his boss or his team about a project that was then leaked or sold by someone living in his home who had access to his home laptop because he didn’t know that the messages he deleted weren’t deleted in real time, and he was fired from his job, that seems like something the company should make very clear when deleting the messages in the first place. A simple warning “Delete this message? Please be aware that deletion is not instantaneously across devices.” Would do.
Incognito mode actually has to tell users that it doesn’t prevent your ISP from seeing what you Google or what websites you visit while using it. They literally had to add a notification so people would know because people didn’t know.
Dunno how it is Apples fault that he didn’t take the time to understand how the tools that he uses work.
If I plow my car into a crowd of people because I mistake the gas for the brake that is not GM’s fault.
And If they label the pedal “stop” and it doesn’t actually stop the car?
I’m not aware of the delete label in iMessage being labeled “delete from every device that you own and have signed into iMessage”.
There are numerous documented ways to avoid the situation he put himself in, he didn’t bother to find one and is now trying to blame others for his stupidity.
Declaring it a “very brutal way” for his wife to find out, he believes that there could’ve been a chance of the marriage continuing had he been able to “talk to her rationally.”
I’m not sure if he means he could continue his behaviour without being caught or if he planned on lying and saying it was a one time thing. Either way I highly doubt he had any plans to be honest.
The “talk to her rationally” bit is hilarious. Yes I’ve been expensively unfaithful, have possibly been exposing you to a number of diseases without your knowledge, and have been physically unavailable regularly for years. What self respecting person wouldn’t “rationally” see that as perfectly acceptable! /s
Not OK with his behaviour, definitely OK with Apple coughing up 100 million quid for the bloke and his wife
For this man’s own stupidity? Nah.
I’m OK with any excuse for Apple to lose money. Do not condone his behavior personally
Just get one of the free texting apps or get a burner. Dumb people.
