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.

  • Ghostalmedia
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    116 months ago

    Isn’t messages in iCloud off by default? I feel like I had to actively enable this in a preference panel.

    • @[email protected]
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      66 months ago

      I think it’s changed recently. Even if you have icloud messaging on you used to have to explicitly turn it on per device. But I recently got a new iPad and when I went to check that setting it was already on.

      • Ghostalmedia
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        16 months ago

        iPad / iOS I think is on by default, but not macOS. Maybe I’m wrong though.

        • @cheese_greater
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          6 months ago

          It does that for Mac too. They do it for all devices I believe altho I can’t speak to Watch or the glasses. Likely so for them to be consistent but can comment outside of conjecture

          Anywhere outside of AppStore signin, you’re basically getting factory defaults which is

          • iMessage
          • Facetime
          • iCloud Backup
          • All your apps that onky have opt-out iCloud sync
          • @FordBeeblebrox
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            46 months ago

            Just wiped and installed Sonoma on a MacBook, can confirm it defaults to on when you sign in with your Apple ID. Handoff is nice and all but I don’t need every device in the room dinging when the local car wash sends me a spam text. The watch is iffy, it mirrors the phone settings but sometimes my phone dings and sometimes my wrist does, not entirely sure why.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 months ago

          I had to turn it on, but that was a 6s. Currently running android without much storage and I’m loathe to back up to cloud, unless it’s business that doesn’t require extra privacy, but may needed as a reference, later.

    • @cheese_greater
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      16 months ago

      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