Gadgets that tell you your partner is cheating

Am going on Dave Fanning's show later this evening to talk about this piece of marketing from Virgin. Basically, it's a survey that claims that 25 per cent of (British) women admit using technology to spy on their partners at some point. Only 16 per cent of men admit the same activity.

What they're really talking about is monitoring e-mails, Facebook accounts and text messages: sneaking a look when the partner is in the bathroom or walking the dog.

But there's lots of stuff you can buy to do a far more comprehensive spying job if you really don't trust your partner. Stuff like:

Deleted text message reader
Often text messages are saved onto sim cards. As such, they are often not completely deleted, even if the phone says they are. This gadget reads and retrieves deleted text messages on the sim-card, and can also read any phone numbers stored on the sim-card.

Bugbear
This is a cuddly bear with a sim-card and a microphone buried buried within it. The range is eight metres and it provides up to six hours listening time (you perv). You just dial into the sim-card and it activates itself, letting you listen in to whatever's going on around it.

Keystroke loggers
We all know about these -- they're easily available and record every keyboard stroke.

Nokia N95/N73/E51 spy-phones
These phones, which used to cost about €3,000 but now cost closer to €500, let you listen in from another phone. They also send copies of all texts sent and received by the user. They're genuine Nokia phones, but modified so that the sim-card activates a live call when you dial into it from your own phone. You give the phone to someone and then dial in: you can now hear everything that is going on around the phone, and your partner. This only works if they're not on the phone, so if they make a call, you won't hear anything. If the person removes the sim-card, your phone will get a text message saying as much.
€550 (N73, E51) €650 (N95)

(This stuff is available through Ebay stores, Maplin.co.uk and Spystore.ie.)

The fundamental question, though, is: if you could know where your partner was and what they were doing every moment of the day (I dunno, through some special power or something), would you watch them?

Comments

[Orlaith]

I'd see no reason to, I'm not the overly jealous or suspicious type. We're practically drowning in each other's company as it is. When we're not working we're together. Although, now that I think of it, if I had the chance to know what he and his friends got up to in Austria for the Euro 2008 Championships, that might stir my curiosity ever so slightly.

[Teknovis]

Cool gadgets! Perhaps you can help me identify a similar type gadget...

I would love to be able to get a cheap, small, standalone, and rugged gadget that I could remotely query (using SMS) to obtain its location.

I am aware of some gadgets that can do this, but they are always part of a managed service with a hefty subscription fee :(

I am not interested in this gadget for covertly locating people or things. I am thinking about it from the point-of-view of leaving in my car in case it is ever stolen.