What's the password? Photo credit: jonathan w
Gentlemen and love rats, time to change your passwords. A study by Norton Security Company has revealed that one in five women snoop on their partner’s email. One in ten men admitted to doing likewise.
Besides the obvious hex finding out about your loved one’s e-fling can put on a relationship, there are significant legal ramifications. Leon Walker, 33, faces five years in jail if convicted for hacking into his wife’s account when he suspected her of cheating. Walker found out his wife was having an affair with her second husband (he was the third) and promptly forwarded the proof to her first husband – who immediately filed for complete custody of the kids. Possibly flexing his muscles at the time, he compared breaking through his wife’s firewall to saving somebody trapped inside an actual burning house: “Do you kick the door open or do you let it burn?” he said.
- Get your logs-off. Dr Terri Orbuch argued on The Huffington Post UK that rifling through a spouse’s mail shouldn’t be a matter for the courts, “not because it isn’t a violation of privacy, but because it’s really more a violation of trust, which is a relationship issue, not a legal one.” Just as in the past it was never ok to dip into a partner’s diary, email communication should be similarly off-limits. If you suspect anything, Orbuch advised a less surreptitious approach to dealing with it, as “two wrongs never make a right.” Rather than getting into a potentially sticky situation, a better method would be to talk to trusted friends, or with your partner directly.
- Like taking vitamins. An odd but heartening tale was told by an interviewee at Bettyconfidential who regularly goes through her husband’s email: “Checking his email is like taking vitamins – it’s a preventative measure!” She reported that she has made him cease contact with “certain women” who had gotten over friendly.
- All my suspicious ladies. Why is the number of women snoops double that of men, wondered Sarah Kidner at Which? Conversation. Are they less trusting? “Or is it just part of a growing trend towards cyber-snooping and women are ahead of the curve?” A similar study conducted by Virgin Mobile Australia in 2009 discovered that women were more likely to read their partner’s text messages than vice-versa. Call it female intuition, but 73 percent of those polled found out things they didn’t like, and 10 percent ended relationships as a result.
