Is your spouse cheating on you? Install “spouseware” on your loved-one’s phone and never get a good night’s sleep thereafter
SECRETIVE PHONE CALLS at strange hours? Unlikely excuses as to their whereabouts? Frantic texting after dinner or before breakfast? The writing is on the wall: your partner is having an affair.
At the centre of any modern infidelity you will find a mobile phone. Late last year, a man made headlines when his wife discovered photos on his iPhone of his genitalia – pictures that were attached to an email sent to another woman. The husband claimed that a software glitch had automatically attached the photos to the email and he had no idea who the recipient was. The wife posted her story on an online iPhone forum where a flurry of geek chatter immediately disproved his excuse, and the wife realized that the only real malfunction was her cheating husband.
To catch a straying spouse, you no longer need a private investigator. All you have to do is examine his or her mobile phone. Check the call record, the SMS messages, and the emails.
But if your cheating partner is circumspect, you may need spouseware.
Spouseware is software that you download and install on your partner’s phone. It operates in the background, undetectable and invisible to the phone’s owner.
Of course, secretly installing spyware is an invasion of privacy and a despicable act. But as one spouseware provider, smstrap.com, exaggerates: “Cases of infidelity affect more than 70 percents of couples. Some think that it’s better to stay unaware of infidelity. Others trust their partners blindly. We don’t want to spoil your relationship – we just want to help you avoid becoming a part of the statistics.”
How very thoughtful.
Other purveyors of spouseware say men need it in particular because “a woman’s natural superiority in communication skills and intuitive sensitivity means that you as a man are no match for her ability to cover up and lie about what she is really doing.” according to Flexispy.com. “It’s tough for a man to catch a cheating wife.”
So what’s a man to do? If spouseware is your choice, there is a wide selection. A basic package sends copies of text messages and numbers called by your partner to your own mobile. The more advanced programs will also let you listen in on phone calls in progress and provide location tracking.
“A cheating wife will frequently have to lie about where she is to cover up,” explains the Flexispy.com website. “With location tracking, you can follow her alleged footsteps later to verify if she really is ‘with my girlfriends shopping’ or if she was in a Holiday Inn on the other side of town.”
The good news for iPhone users is that there are no official spouseware applications available through the Apple App Store. (There is no way Apple would approve of such malware). So unless you’ve jailbroken your phone, your suspicious spouse won’t be able to secretly load any spying applications. However, spouseware is widely available for all other major smart phones (Nokia, BlackBerry, Sony Ericsson, HTC).
But before you do anything rash, it’s important to understand that spouseware is malware – dangerous stuff that is likely to do more harm than good. Be highly suspicious of companies selling this stuff. In order for the applications to work – to deliver information from your spouse’s phone to your phone – all the information must pass through someone else’s server. That means that the purveyors of this invasive software also have all the same personal information about your spouse that you now do.
And you have no idea what they might do with it.
Unlike viral spyware of the past, which sought electronic means of installing itself on your computers, the mobile spyware preys on the worst of human nature to do the installing. Once installed, it opens the door to identity theft, wire fraud and even blackmail.
“It does signify a probable switch in malware authors’ goals,” notes Jimmy Shah, a mobile antivirus researcher with McAfee, on a company blog. “Rather than destroying your data and information, they’re stealing it for profit.”
If you catch your significant other cheating, maybe you won’t care that you’ve infected their phone and violated their privacy. But what if they are innocent and their excuses do check out? How do you get the spouseware off their phone? How can you be sure it’s gone, when by design it’s invisible and undetectable? How do you tell them that you’ve violated their trust?
And finally, bear this in mind: once you install spouseware, you’ll be the one doing strange things with your phone after dinner or before breakfast.
