It’s Your Fault If Your iMessages Get Leaked, Says Apple

An Apple Store Genius whose iMessages got leaked to the web spurred a flurry of reports about the service being buggy. Apple, however, quickly dismissed such claims, saying the employee simply hadn’t followed procedure.

The employee not only had his texts leaked to the web for everyone to see, but also a bunch of photos which were indicative of his tastes in various fields (you can use your imagination).

Not the most pleasant thing that could happen to a person who obviously thought all those messages would remain private but, according to an Apple representative who spoke to The Loop, it was the staffer’s fault that his private life got out.

“This was an extremely rare situation that occurred when a retail employee did not follow the correct service procedure and used their personal SIM to help a customer who did not have a working SIM,” Apple representative Natalie Harrison said.

“This resulted in a temporary situation that has since been resolved by the employee,” added Harrison.

But this is not the only way you can have your iMessages read by someone else.

If your iPhone gets stolen, even if the next user replaces the SIM card with theirs, the messages that you were supposed to receive will end up on that iPhone - because Apple serves it iMessages based on the SIM you used to register it with the company.

In December, when this issue was first reported, Apple’s advice was to toggle iMessage off on the offending device. The only problem is that, in case you’re the one who lost their iPhone, the device will be out of your reach.

And, as this Apple Genius learned it the hard way, you can never be sure that others aren’t interested in your personal life - especially when it involves naughtiness.