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.
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.
This is so toxic. Not saying cheaters get what they deserve but if you can’t trust your husband, I think you have bigger problems than infidelity.
That’s conservatism for ya, can’t divorce and just be happier people for it because sky daddy might be mad
It’s probably mostly due to not wanting to pay spousal support and control issues.
Opposite if they’re military. She gets benefits for being his wife. His income drops if divorced.
There are two people using resources. Should’ve broadened my set, let me revise that now: greed and control issues. Thanks for the catch.
Divorce is sin, side chicks are fine. Got it.
You wouldn’t believe how many people think like that, unless it’s the woman caught out.
sex before marriage is a sin, but you can use the asshole loophole just fine.
*poophole loophole
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.
If you work for DARPA and send anything near sensitive materials over iMessage, and something happens over it, that’s on you for being dumb.
People who work with sensitive information should know better than to use personal communication methods. If they don’t that’s their fault.
Any workplace where this is a worry, this should and probably will be drilled into your head from day one.
The point is to divorce the situation from the cheating aspect, so that people can be less emotionally invested in the outcome. Plenty of jobs that handle industry sensitive information do so over normal communication lines. DARPA was possibly a poor example because the assumption from you is that anything handled by them requires a clearance (which I wouldn’t consider to be true). Something as simple as tracking the whereabouts of a naval ship can and has been done via Facebook posts from people onboard or their families.
The point is that it wasn’t clear to the user that their information wasn’t being deleted in real time and that’s poor transparency on the part of the company because a lot of users probably assume the same just based on the comments I see here.
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.
You’re out of your mind if you think the regular guy off the street should:
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Know the difference between IMAP and POP3
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Know the inner workings of iMessage
If Apple requires proof of understanding to sell their tech, they should submit users to a test. Otherwise, their tech should work how the users expect it to. And deleting messages when I press the damn “delete” button is how any sane person expects things to work. Now, if Apple wants to make a copy and store it in their asshole, and I have to penetrate them anally to delete it as well? That’s fucking debatable in court if it’s a reasonable expectation for a user to have.
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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
All he had to do was put his wife on a different account on the Mac or use another messenger on his phone. I don’t see iMessage as being “leaky” in this instance. His messages didn’t appear anywhere they weren’t supposed to from a technical perspective. He used the same account on the Mac and iPhone, syncing messages worked as advertised. I’d expect this to happen with any message sync feature, it’s not iMessage specific.
It’s like complaining that your wife found out your were cheating because you used FB messenger, yet didn’t create a separate login for your wife on your Linux desktop, and the sole account’s web browser is logged in to your Facebook. He fucked up, that’s poor computer security to let someone else use your account. A major Mac feature is a lot of activity is easily shared across devices you’re logged into. Photos, messages, calendar, reminders, all sorts of things. This tells me to be careful where I log in with my iCloud account and who uses it. Why would you not have a separate login for your wife, especially if you’re fucking around on her and she regularly uses that computer?
I don’t like apple either, but in this case you’re right. I have signal on my phone and on my linux machines, if I share those computers with someone else and let them use the same user, they can open signal and see my messages. The guy in the article is an idiot.
I use Signal as well and that’s what came to mind. Let’s assume I cheated on my wife and hired prostitutes using Signal on my phone. She could use my Windows PC, open Signal there, then see the cheater texts. This isn’t the fault of Signal, Apple, or Microsoft. It did the thing I asked it to do - sync messages. I would have fucked up by letting someone use my Windows login.
Good thing we don’t share accounts, aside from some very short term usage. That’s just a bad idea, even if it’s little personalization type things. Not messaging hookers probably goes a long way too.
I think the issue comes that it only syncs messages one way and doesn’t sync on deletions. Apple should have messages that are removed from all devices when removed from the phone, but it didn’t remove messages when deleted.
Sure the guy is a moron for being a cheater and scumbag, but Apple should remove deleted messages. That’s a privacy problem with Apple’s sync. I don’t use Apple devices due to other Apple crap, but setting up iCloud sync should have a warning when items won’t be deleted and only will be downloaded to devices.
Wasn’t an entire stupid movie about the horrible sync pitfalls in Apple devices premiered years ago?
Why? My laptop has more storage than my phone. Sometimes I need to save a conversation for future reference, and want photos on my laptop where I have more storage, not on my phone.
Sorry I’m late, but I would say that that case means a system should have rules to define when and where the majority of the files are at. Or at least a defined way to declare which system is one-way, and which is two-way.
The old Google Calendar system had that flag, so I find it strange that Apple wouldn’t, unless they really want to push the iCloud data Subscription model.
Well it worked with me, because I paid it.
The article tries to say that this is ridiculous, but I don’t see it.
Sure, he’s a cheater, and he got caught. Not particularly sympathetic.
But, Apple markets their products as privacy-respecting, he deleted something he wanted to keep secret, and his Apple products betrayed him and revealed his secret to someone else, resulting in real-world consequences.
Apple should be held to account for the privacy violation at the very least.
revealed his secret to someone else
I generally don’t like Apple, but I think crying about privacy violation because someone you’re willingly sharing your account with saw your stuff is not reasonable.
My kid sometimes takes pictures of my SO naked because they know how to access the camera. My SO deletes them as soon as they find them. If those pictures were synced to another computer, the expectation is that those pictures would be deleted from that other computer as well. Not deleting those pictures on the other computer is absolutely a privacy concern.
That’s the case here as well. It’s reasonable to think of iMessage as one blob of data, where deleting from one device deletes all copies from other devices. In Apple jargon, it should “just work.” If it doesn’t “just work” as a reasonable person would expect and that results in damages, I think it’s reasonable for Apple to share in those damages.
My kid sometimes takes pictures of my SO naked because they know how to access the camera.
WTF?
The kid is under 5, they’re just curious and like taking pictures. It’s easy to access the camera on my SO’s lock screen.
If it helps, they’re the same gender.
To me gender isn’t isn’t relevant here, even if the kid is way older. The violation of privacy however is.
I don’t recall the age I had to teach my kid not to film me taking a shower or a dump. I believe by the age of 5 they had their own mind when they wanted to be filmed/have their picture taken.
Just to be clear, it’s a child taking pictures of an adult (the child’s biological parent too), not the other way around.
Just to be clear by the age of 3-4 a child should be aware of the concept of not taking what belongs to others including their pictures.
If your SO was fine with their phone being used to take nudes of them it would not be an issue. However in your 1st comment you state they are not.
The kids is old enough to understand boundaries and the word “no”. If that behavior is limited to your own household then fine you do you. It never is though.
