Forget Big Brother: It's Someone Much Closer You Have to Worry About

by Andrew Eisner, Director of Community and Content for Retrevo.com

 While the government is busy crafting legislation to protect your privacy and prevent companies like Apple and Google from tracking your online activities, a recent Retrevo Gadgetology study discovered there's a lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other. If you've ever wondered what the likelihood is that someone is reading your emails or text messages or even tracking your comings and goings, you might be surprised to learn it's more common than ever especially among spouses and parents and their children.


Easy access to someone's e-mails, text messages and call history on cell phones, laptops, and other gadgets make it easy to invade someone's personal space. Everyone's personal information is, more times than not, left sitting on the kitchen counter, readily available to curious onlookers like spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others, or who knows, even nosy friends and relatives. In Retrevo’s Gadgetology study more 33% of respondents admitted to checking a boyfriend's or girlfriend’s e-mail or call history on the sly. Slightly more married couples snoop on their spouses (37%) and an even larger number of parents spy on their kids. The number of parents snooping is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason as 14% of those parents reported finding something they were concerned about.


Suspicious Partners Snooping More Than Last Year

When we looked at the data on snooping from a study conducted a year ago we were surprised to learn that snooping had increased across the board. Overall, the number of people under 25 checking their boyfriend's or girlfriend's e-mails or call history rose from 38% last year to 47% this year. Women continue to be a bit more suspicious than men. The number of women saying they checked their partner's e-mail or call history without them knowing rose from 24% to 35%. It's also possible that unfaithful partners are more careful about hiding any incriminating text messages as the number of spouses reporting they discovered someone cheating rose only slightly.

Spouses and Children Might Need Their Own "Do Not Track" Law

Not only does snooping on e-mails, text messages and call history appear to be more common today but smartphones with built-in tracking technology and portable GPS tracking devices become easy to use on someone without their knowledge and we wondered just how common tracking is among people who know each other. While most respondents (68%) said they would never go so low as to actually gather latitude and longitude data about their spouses or partners comings and goings, over 20% of both men and women said a suspicion of wrong doing could get them to track their spouse or partner.

Kids, Is There a GPS in Your Backpack or a Tracking App on Your iPhone?

Parents appear more willing to track their children's movements. You could argue they want the peace of mind knowing they can locate their kids which probably accounts for the high percentage of parents (59%) indicating they wouldn't have a problem with tracking their kids. Mothers' "protective instincts" may also account for the higher number of moms (64%) vs. dads (53%) who would track their kids. Parents of teenagers appeared slightly more willing than parents of younger children to track their kids whereabouts.

Conclusion

With Congress busily holding hearings and crafting legislation to prevent companies like Apple and Google from invading your privacy, this Retrevo Gadgetology study illustrates that consumers may have just as much to fear from people they know than from big corporations.