Overview

• Michael Mathews, a Minnesota tech executive, has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California, seeking $5 million in damages and access to two terabytes of lost data after his iPhone was stolen.
• Mathews claims Apple’s refusal to reset his account’s Recovery Keys prevented him from recovering critical personal and professional data, leading to the shutdown of his consulting business.
• Attorney Jon Breyer has taken on nearly a dozen additional plaintiffs with similar cases, signaling a growing legal challenge to Apple’s privacy-first encryption policies.
• Apple’s Advanced Data Protection feature, which uses end-to-end encryption, prevents even the company from accessing user data, complicating recovery efforts for stolen-device victims.
• Critics argue that Apple’s current recovery options, which require preemptive backups or legal action, are insufficient, prompting calls for systemic changes to balance user privacy with data recovery needs.