Following a ruling in a California court on Monday, Apple may face a class action lawsuit over the loss of ‘countless’ text messages, caused by the company’s iMessage service.
GigaOm reports that California resident Adrienne Moore filed a case against Apple back in May, on behalf of herself and other former iPhone users who missed text messages after switching to non-Apple phones. Her victory on Monday allows her to push forward with a class action lawsuit against Apple, claiming ““a tortious interference with contract”.
The issue Moore and other former iPhone users face is caused by Apple’s iMessage service, which uses cellular data and Wi-Fi to send text messages to other iPhones and avoid mobile operators’ texting charges: when these users switched to non-Apple phones, iMessage still treated their numbers the same, and attempted to send texts via Apple’s service and not as regular SMS messages.
As a result, these users on non-Apple devices didn’t receive those messages. Moore and others allege that even after taking steps to turn iMessage off for their numbers, they’ve still faced this issue and haven’t received texts.
It remains to be seen just how badly Apple will be affected by Moore’s legal action going forward. In the meantime, Apple has launched an online tool to allow former iPhone users to deregister iMessage even without having their old device on them.
➤ Apple must answer for missing text messages, judge rules [GigaOm]
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