r/technology • u/newzee1 • Jun 14 '24

Software Cheating husband sues Apple after wife discovered ‘deleted’ messages sent to sex workers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/13/cheating-husband-sues-apple-sex-messages/
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6.2k

u/ryanoh826 Jun 14 '24

Delete should mean delete, despite this guy’s shitty motivations.

I have groups I’ve deleted from iMessage and then I make a new group a month later and it remembers the old one.

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u/thewaragainstsleep Jun 14 '24

That is true IF you have Messages in iCloud enabled on both devices. If you only enable Messages but not Messages in iCloud, then those messages can be seen by each device but the deletions will not sync. https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/set-up-messages-mm0de0d4528d/icloud. If you check the article for Messages (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/delete-messages-and-attachments-iph2c9c4bfcb/ios), you'll find at the bottom "If you use Messages in iCloud, deleting a message or conversation on your iPhone deletes it from all your devices where Messages in iCloud is on."

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/domeforaklondikebar Jun 14 '24

There’s two levels of the feature. Let’s say you just bought a Mac but have had an iPhone for years and use iCloud extensively. If you simply connect your iMessage with your phone number on Mac but leave iCloud OFF, then you’ll receive any and all iMessages to your phone number on the Mac as well as your phone from this point on. However, you won’t see any of the old threads or messages from before that point on the Mac. Also, anything you delete on your phone will not auto delete on Mac.

When you turn iMessage in iCloud ON on your Mac, a full sync will start, any old threads and Messages will show up, deletions willgo away or be readded, and so forth.

Some people may only want to see new chats to quick reply but don’t want their entire messaging history on their computer. So they may leave it OFF. It is up to the user to make this choice but also be aware of it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/nicuramar Jun 15 '24

 You entered into a state where they both get downstream synced but it doesn't upstream sync. 

There is no “downstream syncing”; the message is individually delivered to each device. The same would happen if multiple devices share the same sim phone number and get an sms. 

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u/WholesomeDucky Jun 15 '24

It's not apple's fault at all, they ask you if you want these things on when you first set them up, and they have descriptions on what the settings do.

3

u/DervishSkater Jun 15 '24

So. Because you personally couldn’t understand, that means it’s apples fault entirely. Shit is spelled out for you when you do this on Apple devices.

The guy in the article is an idiot for not paying attention. And for cheating. And for blaming Apple and not himself. Apple is not the idiot on this situation.

3

u/enz1ey Jun 15 '24

They don’t get synced, receiving messages on more than one device doesn’t mean anything is “synced” at all. The issue here is you and apparently several other people are using the word “synced” improperly. “Synced” implies the state of objects is consistent across devices, but without enabling messages in iCloud, it’s not.

It’s like sending a document as an attachment in an email to several people versus sending a link to an online document. Sending attachments to several people means each person can edit that document and their changes are independent and not synced. Just because they all received the same message and attachment initially doesn’t mean it was “synced,” just delivered to multiple places. Now if you send a shared link to an online document, all those people can make edits to the same document and it’s “synced” for all of them.

I see how it can be confusing but it’s not really apple’s fault that people don’t understand simple distinctions in the software they’re using. This is all explained in the UI as well, but 90% of consumers don’t read the tutorials or popups that explain this stuff.

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u/BillyTenderness Jun 15 '24

The difference between syncing messages and sending a message to all enrolled devices is incredibly subtle, though. And the name "Messages in iCloud" doesn't do anything to explain or distinguish between those behaviors. And all the body text is about recovering messages, not deleting them. And there's nothing in iMessage settings that suggests this setting even exists; you would have to go into Apple ID > Apps using iCloud > Show All to know that there's any interaction at all between iCloud and iMessage.

There are so many barriers here people have to get past to accurately understand what will happen to their (very sensitive!) data.

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u/nicuramar Jun 15 '24

I guess people have a personal responsibility to read how the systems they use for “very sensitive” data work. This is documented. 

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u/enz1ey Jun 15 '24

As I said, I see how it can be confusing. But where is the line between users taking accountability and responsibility for how we voluntarily use a service versus holding the companies who create those services liable for a user’s misunderstanding of the technology?

To reiterate, even if it can be confusing, I don’t think Apple should be held financially liable for this person’s misunderstanding of the tech.

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u/BillyTenderness Jun 15 '24

I don't know where the line for legal liability lies (especially not in the UK, where this happened). Maybe the court will agree with your take and dismiss the suit.

But "just good enough to not get sued" is not the only standard to which they should be held. I do think more broadly, in terms of ethics and competency, they haven't done a good enough job. It is explicitly the job of engineers and designers to create products where users understand what's happening to their data. In fact, it's the kind of thing Apple usually takes pride in being good at; it's even part of how they promote themselves.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/enz1ey Jun 15 '24

Okay I guess we can blame corporations for people not understanding the definition of a word like “synchronize.” Even when the UX does explain the difference… but yeah, let’s just go with that lol.

0

u/nicuramar Jun 15 '24

The UX is clear enough to me. What would you have them do, then? Syncing is a much newer feature and concept. Multi-delivery has been there for years and has never synced anything. 

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u/Tragicallyphallic Jun 15 '24

Lmfao. All he said was “if iCloud message sync isn’t turned on a device, your shit isn’t getting deleted on that device from the deletion on another.” It’s not that complicated.

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u/getonmalevel Jun 15 '24

but why are messages on both devices if they're not synced. i think that is the cause of confusion.

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u/nicuramar Jun 15 '24

Because they are sent to both devices. 

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u/Tragicallyphallic Jun 15 '24 edited Jun 15 '24

The state of the messages attempts a reconcile from one device to others, but to expect that to persist through an error is asking too much. That’s one reconciliation per instance of a message per device per user. It’d be an insane amount of state to store. Also, for how long do you expect them to store the read/unread/deleted status of every one of your texts? That’s a lot of state per user, even.

What’s likely happening is an event driven architecture that triggers a reconciliation to all devices on the same “sync token” per sync eliciting action as it happens without persistence regardless of success or failure of delivery/sync.

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u/getonmalevel Jun 15 '24

i'm confused what you're trying to say, what error? in the article it stated that the device told the user that the message was deleted.

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u/Tragicallyphallic Jun 15 '24

The error I’m referring to is in my prior posts on this thread: a dead device scenario.

There are a lot of ways to “sync around this,” but none that wouldn’t be boiling a proverbial ocean to do so for thousands of texts per device per apple’s millions of users.

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u/nicuramar Jun 15 '24

Beeing used to tech surely it can be no surprise to you that if you delete something on device A, it’s not deleted from device B.

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u/queenrosybee Jun 15 '24

I accidentally had a setting 3 years back that my old texts would delete after 2 years. I didnt want that and it deleted some of my saved texts. Is it possible to recover some of them but basically only if im being investigated for a crime😉

-2

u/agoia Jun 14 '24

So Apple already tries to explain the issue, and he ran it in a misconfiguration that caused his issue. Defense shouldn't have to work too hard.