To catch a cheating spouse

The existence of the other man or other woman in one’s relationship is an issue that has refused to go away. The statistics showing how often this happens are staggering.

Going by the paternity cases which he has handled in the past year, Kinyanjui Murigi a forensic DNA specialist with Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), a forensic company based in Nairobi, says that approximately 79 per cent of the tests turned out to show that one spouse has been cheating.

Part of the reason why these numbers are soaring is because more people in committed relationships are using modern technology to find concrete proof. No longer do we have to rely on gut feeling and rumours from friends who have seen one’s spouse out on the town with someone of the opposite gender.

Fortunately or unfortunately, just as technology has made it easier to have multiple relationships, it has also provided suspicious partners innumerable options of finding out the truth without having to leave the comfort of their homes or offices.

TOUCH TECHNOLOGY

While statistics say that women cheat nearly as much as men, they are definitely better at hiding it. For the suspicious husband, Kinyanjui offers Semen Spy, a sophisticated test kit which will tell the suspicious husband if his wife has been with a man apart from him.

This test will detect the smallest amount of seminal fluid on clothing – even after a few washes. It will test positive even if the male involved has had a vasectomy because it tests for semen, not sperm.

Are you suspicious about that business trip your wife just took? All you need is to have her underwear tested. Want to know who she was likely with? Surveillance and DNA lab services will confirm the identity of the interloper.

According to Murigi, ascertaining the other man’s identity is as easy as following the suspected party to a restaurant where they are having a meal with the suspect, swiping a napkin that the suspect uses and testing the DNA found on it to match up to the DNA sample from the underwear.

Courtesy of what Murigi refers to as ‘touch technology’, as long as the other man or woman touches surfaces or items of clothing, it will be possible for them to be traced using DNA from their hand prints.

HIDDEN CAMERAS

The popularity of ‘nanny cams’ has spread over the years, more so with busy working mothers who would like to monitor the quality of care that their young ones are getting from their nannies without being too intrusive.

These nanny cams are often tiny cameras that come hidden in common household objects like books, wall sockets, boxes of tissue, soft toys, alarm clocks, spectacles, buttons and watches. They are not easy to detect and can pass for exactly what they look like, and so will not raise the suspicion of those under observation.

Nanny cams can also help catch a cheating spouse – and not just if he may be sleeping with the house help. If your spouse has, at any point, brought their side piece to your house, then this fuss-free technology can be applied to find the truth.

According to Oliver Ndegwa, a computer forensics engineer and the managing director of Triple Play Communications, for as little as Sh15, 000, you can get spy equipment which can be camouflaged to resemble common household objects.

Depending on the depth of your pocket, the cameras can be motion activated and the recorders voice activated, saving you from watching or listening to hours of silence. The beauty of this all is that you can access the content from these recorders remotely on your phone or computer at work, raising no suspicion.

DIGITAL SPYWARE

“You do not need to be an IT guru to be able to use spy ware,” says 31-year-old Kevin. He draws from experience. While he admits that technology interests him, he has no formal training.

He had suspected for months that his wife was cheating but he had nothing tangible. The idea of spying came to him just before his wife’s birthday late last year and he acted by buying her a mobile phone. With the help of his mobile technician friend, he installed spying software in it before gifting it to her.

“Copies of all her text, WhatsApp and Facebook inbox messages were forwarded to my email 20 minutes after she received them even if she deleted the original messages,” he says. His worst fears were confirmed but the couple has since patched up.

Depending on how advanced the phone you are spying on is, you have the option of downloading various applications, for free or at a small cost, which also spy on the surround voices and your partner’s location.

MSpy is one such application, and it can be downloaded to smartphones and tablets from the Internet. It not only allows you to look over your partner’s communications, it also lets you control installed programmes and applications on their phone.

For suspicious Blackberry and Android phone owners, there is Cell Control, also available for purchase online. You do not need to be in possession of the target phone to use it; you simply download the spyware on your own phone then activate it on the target phone by sending an invisible text message.

Some applications can be purchased at a one-time fee ranging from USD25 (Sh2,150) to USD 400 (Sh34,400) or a smaller monthly subscription fee.

If you are looking to monitor laptops and computers, keystroke loggers, which records all the letters that are being typed and emails them back to the logger, are available. Keystroke loggers are used by some employers to monitor employee activity. However, installing this on your partner’s personal laptop may land in you in jail for infringing on their right to privacy, especially if they can access anti-spyware programmes to detect if there is spyware on their computers.

There is also locally designed spyware delivered via Trojan horse email. When the email is opened, it installs software which then captures received text messages and emails, sending them back to the spy. “It isn’t hard to create,” Clive Muchoki, a third year IT student at Egerton University, says. He writes software programmes, and says he is capable of writing Trojan horse and spyware programmes.

Some of this spyware is so subtle that even the antivirus cannot detect it. Generally, when someone spies on their significant other, they are seeking to confirm or deny their paranoia. Most people spy hoping not to get caught because getting caught by an innocent partner then plagues your relationship with trust issues. For this reason, most people like Kevin opt for phone or computer spyware as opposed to hidden cameras as with the former, your partner will never even suspect that they are being watched.

Ndegwa, the software expert observes that when it comes to catching cheating spouses using technology, men usually have an upper hand because more often than not, they are more interested in technological issues.

SIMPLE GIVAWAYS

Hacking isn’t as complicated as most people take it to be. It can be as easy as guessing a loved one’s password. “People set passwords using numbers or names that have a sentimental value to them. If you know someone as well as one does a spouse, this cannot be that hard to figure out,” Ndegwa explains.

Autocomplete on Google, which completes search terms on the computer based on what was searched before, is another dead giveaway. This was how Jane Ng’eno, a marketer with a Nairobi based company, found out about her ex-boyfriend’s side-relationship.

“He was out of town on a supposed business trip but his computer showed that he had been extensively searching for romantic getaways just two weeks before this trip. It was easy to join the dots,” she says.

Your computer may also allow another person to log into your accounts if you’ve allowed sites to remember you. Deleting, disguising, hiding or even encryption of data will not be enough cover because at a fee, software companies like the one Ndegwa owns can easily recover this data.

TRACKING

If your partner is the careful kind that is unlikely to leave evidence of illicit conversations or interactions lying around, sophisticated car tracking systems may be your answer. According to Edward Njoroge of Track and Trace Kenya, a company that provides tracking and security solutions, affordably priced car trackers are available.

These are sold for security purposes, obviously, but many a spouse has used them to monitor their partner’s movements. In addition to showing you where he is at all times, these trackers will take snapshots of all these locations which you are then able to view on your phone or computer.

If you call him late at night and he says that he is at the club with the boys, a GPS car tracker will be able to tell you that he isn’t and his car is indeed parked in a residential area by giving you the car’s location in real time. You can watch these locations on websites like Google Maps on your phone.

Please remember that while most of these gadgets are sold legally, it is the buyer’s responsibility to make sure that the law isn’t broken. The Kenya Information and Communications Act outlaws attempting to, or intercepting a communication message, and stipulates a jail term of up to three years – unless you own the phone or computer or have legal rights over it.

There, however, appears to be a large grey area when it comes to digitally spying on your spouse in relation to the law. This is because these applications used to spy on spouses were created for security, to track stolen phones and devices and to check up on children and teenagers, and the seller isn’t responsible if you opt to use them otherwise.

It is clear that there are limitless ways of catching a cheating partner; how far you are willing to go is a moral issue, which is a different thing altogether.