Hopefully you didn’t click on this thinking there was actually software somewhere in here that could tell you if your significant other or relationship partner was a cheater. Its a blog post remember? (I’ve never been very good at click-bait so if caught you…YAY! GO ME!!!)

More and more I’m hearing from multiple sources (as in…not just the internet) that infidelity is on the rise in the world and monogamy has become an endangered species in terms of world values. There are a lot of information sources out there that seem to agree that 50-60% of all relationships, marriages, and domestic partnerships have some kind of cheating going on behind closed doors. In my own perspective I can’t really say I have any reason to doubt those numbers.

If your reading this then hopefully your doing so because nothing more important is going on right now. Here’s something you can try yourself to see if the numbers of infidelity should make sense to you..

Try this: Grab a piece of paper and a pen, sit yourself down somewhere and try to think/remember of all the people you’ve associated with for an extended period of time (use your own definition of extended). Put a Tally mark on the paper for anyone you could remember…could be a family member, classmate, friend, friend of a friend, neighbor you don’t know all that well, an ex, etc. Once you’ve got all that down separate those tally marks by drawing a line to section them off from the rest of the paper. Now for each tally mark you made ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did this person ever tell me about a time when someone cheated on them?
2. Have I ever heard from someone else that this person cheated in a relationship?

If you answered YES to any of those questions put a tally mark on the separated part of the page. Then count the number of tally’s from the first part and write down that number. Then repeat that step for the second set of tally marks. If your second number is half or close to half of the first number you wrote down then hearing that half of everyone cheats should actually make a little more sense to you. Example: I tallyed 100 people that I can remember and when I think about it around 50 of them have either been cheated on or have cheated.

Of course these numbers aren’t necessarily accurate to what really happened in their relationships, but they don’t actually have to be to prove the point. If you can think of this many people and you can remember that at least of half of them having some mention of cheating going on in their lives then it should make total sense to you (by logic) that 50% of relationships have some kind of cheating going on. Even if you account for variables such as people who are cool with swinging, people who have different definitions of cheating, how many untrue rumors are flying out there, how many instances of cheating were involved with each person, and how many of the relationships were “serious, if everything still comes out to be around 50% then its still more likely to be true that half of people cheat.

You might be thinking “So TechSocrates….what the fuck does any of this have to do with technology? I thought that’s what I was gonna be reading about” Well my valued reader…ever hear of “Setting the stage?”

Skipping the dramatic realization that technology is everywhere and it makes infidelity ALOT easier to commit is kinda hard to do isn’t it? While I can’t speak for everyone, I can tell you that most of the instances I can remember of cheating either started or ended with someone sending a text to someone (usually the infamous dick pick or nude shot) or some extra flirty conversation somewhere on Facebook, some other social media set, or online gaming.

Of course since so many instances of cheating rely on technology to happen, it makes complete and total sense that the internet or technology in general should have a way to fight back against this…after all no one actually likes to be cheated on so why are we building stuff that makes it easier without building stuff that makes it harder?

Just the other day an ad for a “cheat finder” website showed up my news feed which promised to tell you several things about your partner’s online or technological activity so you could know if your partner was being a cheating shithead. It started off by telling everyone that every time someone goes online they leave a “digital trail” and that this software could follow that trail to tell you where they’ve been, what they’ve been looking at, who they’ve been talking to…blah blah blah. There was no mention of a fee or charge for this service but since I had no honest reason to click the link provided I didn’t bother to check if there was…but there was…I’d bet my relationship on it (LOVE YOU BABE!!!)

There’s a fairly good chance that you’ve either seen the same ad or something similar to it. There are also plenty of other software services that can root through the ravels of the interwebs to find other information such as “Is your babysitter really trustworthy? Run a background check on them to find out” or “Curious if that random number calling your phone is legit? Use this reverse lookup software solution and know for sure” or something like that. These things are everywhere anymore and I can’t help but feel if they can afford the ad space online to advertise like they do then people must be giving them money somewhere along the line. While I have absolutely no business telling anyone on the planet how they should spend their money…everyone buying these “services”…should really stop spending their money on them.

First of all…everything someone does online leaves a digital trail? BWAHAHAHAHA BIIIIITCH PLEEEEZ. I could visit 100 different websites in a day and I promise…NO ONE would ever know I was on those websites. The saddest part about that? I wouldn’t need any computer skills at fucking all to make that happen.

While its certainly true that alot of things online can be followed back to a certain point (and even then that point might not be anywhere close to your actual computer) it is absolutely 100% not true in anyway shape or form that any online activity can actually be traced back to you yourself as a person. Don’t believe me at all? Okay then…here’s an easy one.

Try this: Go to google and try making a new email account. (Don’t worry its completely free and you don’t actually have to finish setting anything up) The first thing its going to ask is for your first name and your last name, The next thing it wants is to know what username you want to use…then it wants you to set a password. Now here’s the real trick…don’t…use…your…actual…name….make up whatever bullshit you want for the other sections. Now the next thing it wants is a phone number…leave that blank it also wants a recovery address…leave that blank too…then it wants your birthday…don’t use your real one. It wants to know your gender….don’t use your real one…or do cause actually gender is completely irrelevant to whatever this email thinks its going to prove…Finally agree to terms of service (which dont really mean anything to the point we are attempting to prove)…and finally…hit cancel because we weren’t really gonna make an email account from this…

So what was the point of all that…well its simple…if you had decided to finish setting up that email you would now have a way to register with websites of any class or caliber that could never technically be traced back to you. Sure most of what you put in there was total bullshit but funny thing about your computer and your internet connection is that well…you pay for it…so you can do what you want. You don’t have to tell the internet or your computer anything that is actually true (4chan remember?)

You might be thinking “Wait Wait Wait Wait…slow your role here Tech cause I’m sure theres a way someone could prove that even though the name gender birthday don’t match that I’m the one that set up that email…” and you’d be almost right about that…

Your computer smartphone laptop whatever DOES in fact snitch on everything that happens on it…but unless someone is straight up 100% violating your right to privacy and taking information that does not belong to them in any way shape or form…its only snitching on itself…TO ITSELF…Your computer keeps a detailed log of everything that gets clicked, typed, tapped, or changed in anyway…the reason? It actually has too if someones gonna fix it when it breaks. I can tell you that at on average once a day I find myself digging through a computers list of things it was doing to see what was happening on it right before it crashed or something broke and I can also tell you that there would have been no way to fix that problem if I hadn’t been reading the “snitch report” so the “snitch report” is absolutely necessary if you expect that several hundred dollar piece of technology to ever be fixed.

In alot of ways cyber-forensics are not solid sciences (despite being accepted by the scientific community) because even if my finger prints are on a keyboard or my thumb print was used to unlock something there is no way to prove beyond doubt of physics, logic or general science that it was in fact me…that was using that computer to do anything wrong…The most anyone can ever truly prove is that at some point I typed on that keyboard or at some point I used my thumb to unlock that computer. There is no definitive way to prove when that happened.

To make it simpler let me put it like this: Lets say a bank gets robbed and one of the security guards at the bank is suspected of helping the robbers. They are suspected because the guards finger prints are all over the door to the vault as well as several things in the vault. This does not PROVE the guard helped the robbers in way shape or form. In fact this doesn’t really PROVE that the guard did anything wrong at all…they might have decided to check the vault to look safety concerns (heavy object on a high shelf, trip hazards, ect) which would explain why his fingerprints were everywhere. Even if those types of things weren’t in their job description its not a stretch to think he or she might do that anyway. Not only that but those finger prints could have been there 2 days before the heist actually went down. The fingerprints can be considered “Evidence” all day long…they do not PROVE anything.

Sure you could look over your partners shoulder and manage to get split second view of his or her naked body in a message to someone and clicking the send button, and that would more then likely represent an act of cheating. But that would also be catching your partner red handed (Which is the best way to catch anyone at anything in my honest opinion). Thats a whole different animal from giving someone else money to hunt down their email or phone number or name on every sleazy website there is….

So lets go back to the point I made a couple paragraphs ago. Your computer can snitch on what your doing all day long. But in order for the snitch report to mean anything someone would have to be directly accessing your computer to look at it. Without a warrant (Microsoft doesn’t have a right to issue those, neither does anyone that doesn’t get paid to enforce the law) …the only person or group that has any right to look or for that matter even care about your computers snitch report is…well…you. The only exception to that would be if its broke and you needed someone to fix it…but even in that light you can still refuse to allow the technician access that report. They may tell you they can’t fix the problem (which would be true) but you absolutely have every right to decide if your privacy is more important then the fix.

The “cheat finder” can roam the endless wastelands of the internet all it wants to. It will never be able to definitely prove that I was anywhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Even if it finds that my email was registered on fuckbitchesgetmoney.com there is no sound science that proves I was the one that actually used that email to register. Emails get phished all the time and once they are fished what the email decides to do, and where it does to show up is completely out of anyone’s control (except for the person or bot that phished it). The same thing can be true of background check services and reverse lookup services.

At this point you might be thinking “So tech…finding a picture of my girlfriends naked body with a caption that says ‘ready to ride’ and was posted 15 minutes ago on sugardady.com doesn’t mean she cheating on me?…thin ice bro…thin ice…” Its not really thin ice folks. Lets break this situation down by a couple of facts.

1. Just because the picture was posted 15 minutes ago doesn’t mean thats when it was taken…just means thats when it was added to the website. That picture could have been taken before the two of you ever got together.
2. The fact that her email account is the one associated with the profile doesn’t mean she’s the one that put it there. Her email could have been phished or hacked by someone and they could have used it to make that account themselves. (FYI if your email gets phished your emails arn’t the only thing at risk…if you logged into that email address on a computer that has all your nudie goods on it those can be taken too even if they were never uploaded or used with your email)
3. Your girlfriend having a nude picture of herself that you’ve never seen before doesn’t mean anything. If she took the picture before you got together she is NOT obligated to show that to you. (If I had nudes taken before my current relationship started I would NOT necessarily be okay discussing or talking about them with my current partner, even if we were sexually active).
4. Even if the picture was taken after the relationship started she may have intended to send that to you the next time you had to go out of town or to spice things up in general. Just because someone takes a nudie doesn’t mean they did it for anyone other then you.
5. The caption means nothing cheif…anyone could have typed that

Bottom Line: No matter how legit an act of infidelity may look, if technology was involved in any way shape or form there is no way to PROVE that what your looking at is exactly what you think it is. You can’t prove that the exact same human being you are in a relationship or marriage with is using their technology to cheat on you (unless you can catch them in the act of using technology to cheat). The same holds true for online background checks and reverse look-up services. Doesn’t matter if its a smartphone, laptop, desktop or hell even a playstation or xbox.

Bottom Bottom Line: Don’t give anyone money to tell you about what someones doing online. They literally CANT prove it to you.