Electronic gadgets create e-trails that make affairs dangerous

Smartphones are watching you

Thinking about having an affair?

Think again.

Social media and gadgets can make affairs easier to start and maintain.

As Tiger Woods found out, they leave electronic trails everywhere.

It sees you where you’ve been sleeping
She shows when you’re a rake
He’ll know if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out! (apologies to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”)

Tiger Woods famous voice mail to his Jamie Grubbs ended up on TMZ for all the world to hear. Tiger Woods confesses, voice mail out and Chinese video

How dumb could he be to leave a trail? About as dumb as most people. The ease with which we use cell phones, computers and other gadgets fools us into thinking they are harmless.

They are harmless only if you have nothing to hide. Otherwise, anyone can find out what you’ve been up to by checking things as simple as Lady Diana checking the caller list on Charles’ phone.

Cell phones are worse. They store all in coming and outgoing calls. They have a great feature that lets us save incoming numbers along with the person’s id. If that person is on the other end of an affair it will be easy to spot.

Computers leave a trail of places you’ve been and things you have looked at. If you like to browse porn sites, that’s one of the easier things to spot.

Chat services store your titillating messages. If they are to your partner they might be slightly embarrassing. If they are part of an affair, they can mean talking to the lawyers.

A suspicious partner can install a keystroke tracker on your computer to see where you are going on the net and who you are talking to. It can be monitored from a remote site and you may never know it is there. Or if your computer is locked down because you are careful, the same device or software can be installed on the family router.

One wife is reported to have spotted her husband’s car on Google Streetview parked outside a strange address. It turned out to be his mistress.

Some people have been known to set up phony second profiles on Facebook to attract “friends” for liaisons. Sounds safe until you start posting pictures and discussing your activities. One guy did that and one of the new “girl” friends he got was also a personal friend of his wife.

Twitter is even worse because it is the new “tell-all” social media. People Twitter about leaving a restaurant, watching a movie, or burping. Well if your partner isn’t the one you are watching the movie with, look out. The whole idea of Twitter is to spread your social network outwards. Even on a disguised account, people have picked up their current and soon-be-ex partners who can then snoop on what’s going down.

Coming facial recognition software will allow people to scan millions of pictures posted on the Internet to see if their partner has an secret profile. Google is now merging data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to make that even easier.

However, in the end it is the emotional responses that trip up cheaters. Being human they can’t help the little slips that tell the tale.

Suggested by story in the Washington Post Cheating? Hello, you’ve got e-trail