Man Sues Apple After Wife Discovers Cheating Via Messages Synced to iMac

If you're cheating on your wife with prostitutes and she finds out, it's probably best to apologize and see if there's a way to save your marriage. Or you could sue Apple.

A man is England is taking door number two. According to The Times, the man—who didn't want to disclose his real name or hometown for privacy reasons—is suing Apple for £5 million because his wife found out about his philandering via the family iMac.

As the story goes, the man was soliciting sex workers over iMessage. He then deleted the texts from his iPhone to hide his tracks. But as anyone with multiple Apple devices knows, it's possible to sync Messages across your phone, iPad, and Mac if they're all signed in with the same Apple ID. The man's messages didn't disappear from the iMac, and his wife found them.

She filed for divorce, which ultimately cost the man more than £5 million. And he now wants Apple to pick up the tab.

His lawsuit claims that iMessage doesn't make it clear that deleting a message on the iPhone doesn't delete the message everywhere else. He argues that, for his wife, "it was a very brutal way of finding out. 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 wants to establish a class-action lawsuit for other men who don't know how to work their phones and lack introspection. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Recommended by Our Editors

How to Make Sure iCloud Is Backing Up, Syncing Your Data

What Is iCloud+? Apple's Cloud-Based Storage Service Explained

How to Change Your iPhone or iPad Passcode to Something More Secure

For now, he and anyone else who may not want to share their messages with the entire household should either not sync their texts across devices, or make sure iCloud for Messages is turned on, which will delete messages across devices. Activate it via Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Show All > Messages in iCloud > Use on This iPhone.

Note that this will eat into your iCloud data; you get 5GB for free, but can upgrade with a standalone iCloud+ plan or Apple One bundle.