Company files kept arriving on ex-employees’ personal devices long after their last day, with iCloud still delivering fresh versions of documents they could no longer legitimately access.
The ex-workers, more than half a dozen in all, described the files showing up unprompted in personal iCloud storage, and admitted they were too nervous to remove the documents in case Apple noticed. Their accounts still carried planning material for product launch events.
Work and personal storage get mixed because Apple urges staff to pair the 2TB work iCloud allowance with their existing personal Apple Account, and most people run one account to avoid carrying two phones. The managed work folder is cut off when employment ends, but documents that never land there, plus files passed over Messages, keep flowing.
Apple disputed the framing, telling The Information the OpenAI case concerns a departing engineer accused of downloading files, not documents left in personal iCloud accounts, and that it does not sue ex-workers who end up with company files by accident.
The disclosure follows earlier cases where Apple accused departing engineers of taking files, including a Vision Pro engineer in 2025, and sits awkwardly with Apple’s privacy-focused branding. The report suggests offboarding does not reliably purge shared content from personal accounts.
