Online Infidelity

As we all know, the internet is a haven for people looking for relationship. This ranges from those who are totally honest and openly looking to meet someone to the cheating spouse who ends up using this avenue to hide that fact that they are married and that any relationship they engage in would be adultery at best. An unfaithful spouse will end up getting into all sorts of trouble using the internet, including internet pornography, which they do not consider to be cheating, to cybersex, to online dating sites which help to arrange actual meetings. These types of behaviors then lead to real life infidelity.

Fortunately, with a few advanced computer techniques, you maybe able to determine if your significant other is cheating.

DESKTOP INDEXES

A relatively new invention in the world of the personal computer is the desktop index. These programs, such as Google Desktop or the Windows Desktop Search, actually index the entire contents of a computer and allow users to search for files, or even the contents of files. What this means is that any emails sent from or to your computer can be searched after they have been indexed.

Using keywords such as wife, husband, meet, our place and hundreds more that you might think are suspicious, you can often find emails sent or received, even if the email account is password protected.

If your spouse is not very computer literate, you may also be able to install this program and it will index the desktop in a couple of hours. Once your work is done, you can search for information you think is out there and then remove the program when you are done without anyone ever knowing.

COOKIES AND HISTORY

Similar to the desktop index is a much older, but sometimes invaluable method of online detective work, looking at cookies and the history folder.

In this age of online relationships, it is possible that your partner is cheating on you with some anonymous character from the internet. Online personal sites that range in focus from relationships to brief sexual encounters, make meeting people for affairs easier than ever. But you maybe able to discover if your spouse has visited these sites quite easily, so long as he or she isn't intentionally covering the tracks.

A cookie is a small text file that resides in a special folder on the computer. This so called cookie is usually an innocent text file that tells the web browser something about the web sites visited. The title of a cookie is usually a hint to the website and by opening the cookie in a text editor program, like wordpad which is installed on nearly all windows based computers, the information can be viewed. This will easily give away any suspect sites that the web browser has been directed to. To find the cookies folder, do a windows search for the word cookies and the resulting folder of that name will contain the files. Note that the more computer literate your spouse is, the more likely they are to know that someone looking for evidence of infidelity may look at the cookies and they may be deleted.

Cookies aside, your web browser has a history which can be viewed, depending on the browser, by navigating to the view menu and finding its option or hitting Ctrl-H in most browsers. The history will show a comprehensive history of sites visited, the good, the bad, and the ugly and the list is usually searchable. Once again, the computer savvy unfaithful spouse may know this trick and always keep the history empty.

In some instances, these may not be enough. If you are certain that there is evidence of an unfaithful spouse or adultery on your computer, you may be able to utilize our Computer Forensic Investigation Services. This involves us making a mirror copy of the hard drive and analyzing that drive in our lab. It WILL find EVERYTHING that is on that computer including old deleted files and emails. The cost begins at just under three thousand dollars and can take up to three weeks to complete, but if the answers are there to be found, this method will find them.

For more information or to speak with a private investigator, please contact us at

888-677-9700.

Note: the above information is based on the opinions and interpretation of the author and is for general informational purposes. These procedures may not work exactly as described. Further, this information is NOT legal advice. Do not rely on any of this information as a legal opinion about your ability to use these techniques on a computer legally without verifying same with your attorney.

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