The New York Times [registration required] reports that spouses are using electronic means to spy on their significant others. Here are three examples:
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Research in Motion Ltd.'s (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry uncovers a husband's affair with a medical resident. One woman noticed that her husband, a Manhattan surgeon, was distant and obsessed with his BlackBerry. She drew him a bubble bath on his birthday and then pounced on the BlackBerry while he was in the tub. His e-mail messages documented his affair with a medical resident, including plans for a liaison that night. A few weeks later, she found messages in his AOL e-mail from a mortgage company proving he'd purchased a $3 million Manhattan condominium for his trysts with the medical resident.
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Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TWX)'s AOL e-mail reveals wife's Australian lover. A Philadelphia man believed his wife was engaging in secret online correspondence. He found e-mail messages to a lover in Australia that she had sent from a private AOL account on the family computer. The man's lawyer used the AOL e-mails as evidence to help win a legal dispute between the man and his wife and an advantageous settlement.
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PC Pandora documents wife's affair with parent at her kids' school. This year, a Philadelphia technology consultant installed on her computer a $49 program called PC Pandora that took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Those e-mails revealed the sites she visited, her IMs, and her passwords -- yielding access to all her e-mails. His spying proved that for 11 months she had been seeing another man -- the parent of one of their son's private school classmates. The technology consultant said they were arranging meetings and posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web to solicit sex with other couples.
All's fair in love and war. But in this era of personal electronic communications, the weapons have changed. And with this article, I would not be surprised if PC Pandora's sales start to spike. If it was a public company, I would consider investing in it.
Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in securities of Research in Motion or Time Warner, BloggingStocks' parent.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-18-2007 @ 7:58AM
Ken said...
I am with the Pandora folks. While many do use our software to spy on significant others, we mainly intend the software to be used to monitor kids. We actually give software away FREE to school districts across the country. While no press is necessarily bad press, we'd rather that folks use our program responsibly and ethically. :)
Cheers...