Extramarital affairs are downright common. People cheat. Not everyone, not all the time.
Even now, in the age of serial divorces and polyamory, when marriage is as flexible — and even disposable — as it ever has been, devoted husbands and wives succumb to temptation.
When looking for evidence of a cheater, partners can dig up a lot by looking at what or who a person searches for on the web and social media. On Facebook, you can see every single person someone has searched for if you know the secret.
Years of marriage will hone a spouse’s instincts, and we often know when something seems funny. Smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart tech absorb adulterous evidence like a sponge. Once suspicions are aroused, a digital trail could contain many clues about a potential dalliance.
A hidden or locked phone
Many people turn their phones away from others to protect their privacy. However, most of us don’t hide our phones from our spouses. This gesture is subtle, but it can suggest illicit text conversations. Cheaters are often protective of their phones; they don’t share their passwords, and they even change their passwords to keep their phones’ content a secret.
Push notifications are a nightmare for unfaithful spouses because they may show snippets of conversation – from texts, emails, and so on – that could incriminate both parties. Spotting a suspicious push notification, or even noticing the sudden absence of them, can be suggestive.
Find their phones
Many popular devices utilize some form of location technology and often it’s easier to have the service turned on than to disable it. If your spouse uses an Apple device connected to a family account and has enabled location sharing, you can locate their device by logging on to iCloud.com and clicking on Find My iPhone or using the Find My Friends app.
If your spouse uses an Android phone and is logged on to Google on a shared computer, you can type “Find My Phone” into the search bar, and you’ll be provided with the phone’s location. Other services such as Life 360 offer similar tracking.
Secret messages hidden in audio or photo files
It’s easy work to embed an image into an audio or picture file secretly. You think it’s a familiar song or a landscape shot, but a steamy pose might be hidden behind the notes and trees.
Tools like OurSecret or QuickStego make this point-and-click work for the casual cheater. The snoop usually suspects nothing unusual. The files appear to be ordinary. You need to know a special keystroke or code to unlock the files.
If your spouse suddenly takes an interest in music or photography, this could be a clue.
Check the phone’s locations
As we become more reliant on GPS, you may also want to take a peek at your spouse’s location history. For Google users, the “previous destinations” menu option on the navigation system may chronicle your spouse’s movements; for Android users, the Google Timeline feature (found in the Google Maps app or Google Maps online) functions similarly.
If your spouse uses an iPhone, there is one place to be sure to look. Many people don’t even know this treasure trove of tracking exists.
You can find an iPhone user’s frequent locations in Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services and then Significant Locations. It takes a fair amount of effort to disable or delete these types of settings consistently, so if they are up to no good, you’re likely to find something.
Special online documents
The most dangerous habit for cheaters is to send photos and videos. These media may spice things up, but they are vivid evidence of an affair. Such materials can be used as evidence in divorce proceedings – especially if a betrayed husband or wife can save or download copies.
Cheaters are known to create online Google documents or Microsoft 365 files that look innocent until opened. The filename might be, for example, “Third quarter goals.” When the file is opened, the first page appears to be a bunch of corporate speak.
But scrolling down reveals the file’s real purpose. That is, the online document is a clandestine way to share notes, photos, and videos with someone else.
Sexting Apps Give Users a False Sense of Security
For those not in the know, apps like Snapchat and Poke allow you to send photos, captions and videos that self-delete after a set amount of time (usually only a few seconds). Tigertext is a similar service, but for text messages rather than images. These apps are reportedly being used widely by teens and others to do things like sext (the texting equivalent of phone sex), pass notes and even cheat on tests. But a cheating spouse may also be using them to send messages to a paramour on the sly under the false assumption that the evidence will disappear forever.
One major loophole is the ability of the receiver of such messages to take screenshots, take a photo with another device or otherwise save the interaction, thus thwarting the expected self-destruction. The Snapchat app is supposed to let you know if someone takes a screenshot, but there are ways the receiver can get around that, too, especially on a jailbroken phone. And there's certainly no notification if a photo is taken with another device. The company's privacy policy even states that there is no guarantee that images will be deleted, and users are sending at their own risk. Anything you send can end up online or otherwise viewed by people for whom you did not intend it.
A suspecting partner can also buy monitoring software or hardware that can recover deleted pictures and other data from phones or SIM cards. Just like with other types of data, deleting doesn't necessarily mean a picture is unrecoverable. And the cheater is bound to leave his or her phone lying around at some point.
Go through the trash
Deleted digital items are typically never gone for good. A computer’s trash or recycle bin retains items until the bin is emptied. Cloud services such as DropBox let you restore items from the trash.
Emails deleted accumulate in the trash until it’s emptied. Voicemails on an iPhone are deleted but they can be retrieved. Apps deleted from a phone can be restored, too. If you’re using carrier services, voicemails may be available on its site.
A second phone and SIM card
An easy way to keep two romantic lives separate is to buy two separate phones. That way, the cheater doesn’t get confused and text the wrong person by mistake. The existence of this second phone is also a liability, even if it is described as a “work” or “emergency” phone.
Another technique is to purchase a separate SIM card, which can be switched out of phones that have been “jail-broken.” This is a lot of work and unlikely for most cheaters, but if you find a SIM card lying around, you may be able to extract its data by inserting it into another phone.
Any new entries for people or companies you are unfamiliar with could be a ruse. Call the number and see who answers. It’s a good idea to block your number.
Check battery usage
Cheaters typically use a phone because it’s easy to hide and always in reach. You can learn a lot about a person by looking at his or her phone’s screen time and battery usage.
On an iPhone, open Settings, Screen Time and then, See All Activity. You’ll see what apps were used and for how long.
On Android, open Settings, Device Care, and Battery. Among the stats, you’ll see a list of the apps used, time used and, total battery usage in percentages.
Human Error
A person might make the mistake of failing to protect against many of the issues from the previous pages, or of leaving information lying in plain sight for a loved one to find. Haven't you ever sent an IM, text or e-mail to the wrong person, or unintentionally posted something to a wider audience than you intended? These errors are common, sometimes thanks to auto-complete or our increasingly quick digital communication reflexes that cause us to hit send before we realize we've done something wrong. Former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner accidentally posted a picture of his underwear-clad crotch to his Twitter page in a sexting snafu, ultimately bringing to light several online relationships and leading to his resignation from Congress.
But in an affair situation, you're also trusting another party not to make any mistakes that might give you away. Even if you're a security buff who is very careful to cover your trail, who is to say your partner in crime is doing the same? Just ask former U.S. general and director of the CIA David Petraeus, whose jealous mistress sent harassing messages to a suspected rival, which led to an FBI investigation that brought to light their relationship, as well as a possibly inappropriate relationship between the potential rival and another high-ranking general. The e-mails were sent anonymously, but were apparently not anonymous enough, since the investigation led right to the mistress. The scandal resulted in General Petraeus's resignation.
Most uncovered dalliances will not result in national publicity or resignation from a high-level government post, but they will cause the pain and suffering of everyone involved. And seriously, just think for a moment about the fact that the head of the CIA couldn't keep an affair hidden. Pretty much everyone is bound to slip up somewhere down the line. And in this day and age, it's likely to be a technological slip-up.
Search every letter of the alphabet
Cheaters would have to be pretty stupid not to clear the search histories on their browsers. If they routinely access dating sites, especially hook-up services like Ashley Madison and AdultFriendFinder, they will probably think to cover their tracks, unless they like flirting with disaster as much as attractive strangers.
Auto-fill is harder to remember. Search engines like Google do a remarkable job of guessing your search parameters, based on everything you have ever searched before.
If you share a computer with a suspect spouse, you may intend to type “Megalodon” and instead, the words “Megan Granger home phone number” flash across the field. Take this a few steps further. Start typing each letter of the alphabet and see what pops up.
Check cloud services
To keep images and video covert, cheaters may also use a particular cloud service. For example, the Keepsafe Photo Vault is designed to both store these media files and prevent others from accessing them. Many customers use Keepsafe for work or personal reasons, but if you notice that your spouse has a Keepsafe account and can’t figure out why, you may be onto something.
Two similar services are Vault and Hide It Pro, which were created to store photos and video and protect them with a PIN. They also function similarly to cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Apple’s iCloud, but security is their top priority.
Be sure to think out of the online cloud box. Check Amazon Prime because this service gives you a place to store your photos, too.
Browser History
A lot of us practically live our lives on the Internet these days. You can use it for communication, entertainment, handling of finances and schedules, purchasing just about anything and a host of other purposes. It can aid you in anything you are doing, good or bad (including cheating). There are even sites that specifically cater to cheaters, like AshleyMadison.com, a dating site that allows you to hook up with willing affair participants.
But your forays onto the Web leave signs of what you have been doing for anyone with access to your computer to find. Before you go visiting dating sites, buying gifts or making hotel reservations on a computer in your house, know that your partner can easily sniff out sites you've been visiting. You might want to set your browser to not save your history if you plan to engage in any illicit activities.
Even if you delete your browser history, cookies may also be saved on your computer. These can reveal what sites you've visited and even allow someone else to log into your accounts if you've allowed sites to remember you. Other possible tell-tale signs of Internet activity are temporary files of downloaded Web content. Covering your tracks is never as simple as deleting your history, since a suspicious partner is likely to dig further.
Third parties can also exploit security loopholes to view your history and target ads at you, but that's probably last on your mind if you are engaging in an affair. Still, an odd collection of advertisements for things related to dating and relationships could potentially tip off a spouse, as well.
Social Media Might Not Be as Private as You Think
A large percentage of the population uses social media sites such as Facebook as a place for communication and sharing (often oversharing) the details of their personal lives. Facebook and other such sites gather an incredible amount of information about you, and their policies change from time to time. Knowing what settings you need to check to keep things as private as possible can be complicated. We may think we have the privacy settings figured out and know who is viewing our posts and pictures, but one policy update or added feature and suddenly activity you meant to be private could be public, or more public than you had hoped. You certainly can't count on anything you post on your wall or anyone else's to remain just between you and a handful of people.
Even if you are on top of all the settings, your friends and even your apps can share information about you that might unintentionally incriminate you. Services like Facebook Places and apps like FourSquare and Google Latitude can give away your physical comings and goings. Friends might check you into places, tag photos of you, or make offhand comments online that could expose your lies. So even more likely than someone purposefully recording your every word or move is accidental betrayal by social media.
There was a recent, albeit innocuous, incident with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi, where she posted a photo for friends only, but because of the way Facebook photo tagging works, a friend of another sibling saw and shared the image via Twitter. While the photo was a relatively benign image of the family standing in a kitchen sending smartphone messages to each other, Randi expressed her objection to the unauthorized share and the Twitter post was removed. But the image lives on via various articles. This had nothing to do with cheating, but it just goes to show you that no one is immune to accidental public sharing. Anything you or your friends do or say or post on a social media site could easily make its way beyond its intended audience, say to your spouse, who thought you were at work Tuesday night when you were really chugging a beer with your fling at a party.
Mobile Device Call and Text Histories
Even if your cell phone is devoid of spyware, your phone can still betray your cheating ways. Like the browser history, most mobile phones keep a history of recent calls. If your spouse knows your password, or if you don't have the password protected, it only takes a moment to check the device for dialed numbers, and possibly names if you have your paramour's contact information stored. The same goes for text messages, which can be even more incriminating than a frequently called number, especially if you've engaged in sexting.
There is a Call and Text Eraser app (Cate) for Android that was designed for texting on the sly. It hides the app when you shake the phone, doesn't put an icon on the home screen, lets you hide numbers from your contact list and creates hidden call and text logs. But no app is foolproof. If someone else installed it on your phone, it could be used as a spying app to hide secret call logs on your phone.
There is even a cloud service called Uppidy that allows users to save their texts to the cloud, which, if you, your partner or, say, a company providing you with a phone, sign up for it or a similar service, could create even more chances for unintentional self-incrimination via a digital trail.
And even those who are crafty enough to password protect, delete history and use privacy apps can still be betrayed by the phone bill itself, which usually lists the phone number, date, time and duration of every call you've made each month, and may contain similar information about texts.
Your phone company may even keep copies of texts you've sent, at least for a little while. They could be kept for hours, days or months, depending upon the situation. Most companies are deleting them faster and faster as their server space fills up. And getting copies, even of your own texts, currently requires a court order. But this is another indicator that anything you send may not be as temporary as you think.
Automatic Login and Password Storage
Someone with physical access to your computer could use software to discover passwords to various services and log into your accounts. But they might not have to go to the trouble. Another way cheaters can unknowingly give away their activities is by letting the computer, software applications or various Web sites save their usernames and passwords so that they don't have to type in their login information. Or they might even have programs like instant messaging (IM), e-mail, or anything used regularly set to start up and log them in automatically anytime the computer is booted. The computer itself might even be set to automatically log in without a password (which is moot if you share a computer anyway).
Some things, such as some IM clients, will default to opening at startup if you do not change the settings during or after installation. Your computer, browsers or other software can even be set to save passwords for applications and Web sites for you. Many Web sites allow you to select "Remember Me" to save your information via cookies so that you don't have to rekey your information every time you visit them. And password management software is readily available to help you keep track of multiple logins or to log you into things with only a single master password, for those of us who just don't have the facility to remember a gazillion usernames and passwords.
These services can be convenient time-savers, but can also let others who have access to your computer easily log into your accounts to do things such as view financial transactions or read your e-mails and IMs. If you've been using your computer for illicit goings-on, they could make it easier for someone else to discover the tell-tale signs.
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