"Please help! I took my husband's i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account)," Susan wrote. "When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone.

"He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent." Susan then pleaded with the Apple experts on the discussion board to tell her if they had ever heard of the bug, saying "the future of my marriage depends on this answer". Susan did not leave any contact details so it is not possible to contact her to verify the story. Her account on the Apple site says she is located in New Jersey.

Most of the initial responses informed Susan that it was not possible for images to be attached to emails automatically. Curiously, two newly registered users then posted responses saying they had experienced the glitch several times but didn't know how to fix it.

They were quickly shot down by regulars of the discussion board who queried whether the posts were made by Susan's husband or online miscreants. Susan did not publish the photograph online but described it in G-rated language for the benefit of the morbidly curious onlookers. "It was a close-up shot of him pleasuring himself taken at the exact moment of maximum pleasure ... It's such a good shot that one must wonder if he actually practiced it a few times before getting it right," she wrote.

Susan thanked the discussion board users for their assistance but not before declaring that her lawyer was "working on the divorce complaint".