Recent research has shown that people who cheat online are less likely to get found out than those who do so offline.
Many members of Illicit Encounters, a dating website for married people in the UK, said that the security provided by the site played an important part in their decision to join. Less than 10% of the site’s membership have been caught in the time that they have been members.
Crucially, of those whose infidelities have been discovered, over 65% pointed to an incriminating text message or phone call as the instrument of their undoing and it is becoming increasingly common for such messages to be used as evidence in divorce cases. This is partly due to the fact that it is a criminal offence to hack into someone’s email account but mostly because people have a habit of leaving phones full of guilty secrets lying around.
I know this from personal experience.
In the middle of a particularly steamy text exchange with my first on-line romantic partner, I left my phone lying on the kitchen worktop whilst I went outside to hang out the washing. When I came back, my teenage daughter was loitering nearby in a way that set all my maternal instincts jangling.
She said nothing… and I didn’t pursue the matter. I did, however, ensure that, in future, I deleted everything after reading.
It was a valuable lesson but one that was learned too late.
Some years later, she told me she had seen a ‘disgusting message on my phone’ and that’s how she knew that her parents’ marriage was not going to last the course.
The computer is a far safer option because browsers give us so many ways to control information about our activities. Always ensure that you delete your cache and history when you move away from the computer and, provided a suspicious spouse has not installed some form of software that can monitor movements in a different manner, any record of what you have just been up to should be gone.
Knowing that many of its members are pursuing an affair as a way of supporting their marriage, not destroying it, Illicit Encounters have worked hard to ensure that it is a difficult site to penetrate if you’re looking for someone specific, offering password-protected photographs and other methods to keep the identities of their members as secure as possible.
And of course , for my US readers, there’s Ashley Madison
Not being in a relationship at the moment, I have no one to cheat on, lol! Saying that, I know what you mean with the kids…my favourite rampant rabbit is missing, last time I had it out a couple of weeks ago, I know I didn’t put it away properly….I teared the bedroom upside down today and CANNOT find it! I’ll be checking my 11year old sons bedroom tomorrow to see if for some reason he picked it up!