If you suspect that your husband or wife is a cybercheat there are some ways to search for clues in the computer he or she uses. A couple words of caution: if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could do more harm than good or you could get caught trying to catch your spouse.
A few years ago, when we changed from dial-up to cable, I tried to set up an ethernet connection between two computers so that my husband and I could both go online at the same time. After several days of fiddling with settings, installing ethernet cards, and wrapping Cat 5 cable throughout our home, I had to pay someone to fix what I had messed up.
I share this because no matter how much you think you know, there’s always the possibility that you’ll do something that will get you in trouble. In other words, when you’re trying to catch your spouse doing something wrong, you don’t want to do something dumb.
If you and your spouse share the same computer, and it’s the only one they use, you’ve got an easier chance at snooping than if you have to get access to their personal computer when they’re not around.
The following are some things you can check without a lot of difficulty.
Web Browsers:
In your web browser check the “Favorites” (Internet Explorer) or “Bookmarks” (Netscape) for sites your spouse has saved.
Check the address bar for sites your spouse has recently visited. Visit the ones that look suspect.
Look in “History” to see the pages your spouse has been visiting. In Internet Explorer, click on “Tools,” “Internet Options,” then at the “General” tab click on “Settings” and then “View Files.” Click on “Type” at the top of the list of files then scroll down to the file types “Microsoft HTML Document” and you’ll have a complete list of all URL’s your spouse (and you if you also use the computer) have visited since the last time the history was cleared.
While you’re checking the history you can also increase the number of days pages are kept before they’re cleared if the setting is low, such as one or two days. This isn’t a foolproof way to find out what your spouse is doing. If he or she is also Web savvy it is very easy to delete the individual listings from the computer while leaving the rest of the history files intact.
A search of “Cookies” can also lead you to a site your spouse doesn’t want you to know about. Open Windows Explorer and look for the c:WINDOWSCookies directory. If you can’t find it, go to “Tools,” “Find,” and search for Cookie* on all drives in your computer. When the directory appears, double click on it and you’ll be looking at all the cookies that have been set by the web sites your spouse (and you) have visited.
While your spouse may selectively remove cookies from sites he or she has visited, it’s more work than simply clearing the “History” through the web browser.
In Netscape select Tools and then History to view the history list. A blank history list is a bit suspicious particularly if your spouse is deleting the history every time he or she goes off line. Even if your spouse is clearing the history you can go to C:Program FilesNetscapeUsersyour_user_name and look for the file called netscape.hst.
Email Clues:
How you search for clues to cybercheating depends upon the email program your spouse uses. If your spouse is sending and receiving email using Outlook Express or Eudora, check first for messages in the In, Sent, Trash and Deleted Email folders. Even if messages are regularly being deleted, you can still search for them by going back into Windows Explorer.
If your email program is Eudora, first find the Eudora folder on the C: drive, then search for “in.mbx” which is the incoming mailbox. You can then doubleclick on this file and when the message box opens up asking which program you wish to use to open the file, choose your text program such as Word or Wordpad (this file is usually too large for Notepad to open). Now you’ll be able to read all email that has come into the inbox. You can do the same for “out.mbx” to read all outgoing emails.
Make sure that the email program itself is set to “no” for emptying the trash when exiting the email program. Make sure that the default for the sent folder is set to “save.”
Check to see what the setting is (again under Options or Properties) for incoming email. If the “leave email on the server” option is not checked, check it now and set it to “after 7 days.” This now allows you to retrieve the incoming email from another computer within that 7 day period of time even if your spouse has already retrieved it, read it, and deleted it. If there is an additional option to delete email off the server after the email has been deleted on your personal computer, change that option to “no.”
Depending upon the version of AOL your spouse uses, deleted mail remains in the Personal Filing Cabinet. You can read all incoming and outgoing mail by opening AOL (there’s no need to sign on or be online), clicking “My Files” then “Personal Filing Cabinet.” If your spouse has Preferences set to “off” for “save deleted mail,” turn them “on.”
If your spouse has a POP email account you can go online and look at the incoming email as well as email your spouse has already deleted from the computer as long as the email hasn’t been deleted from the mail server. Your ISP may provide web-based email retrieval. You can also use sites such as WebMail.com and Web2Mail.com as long as you know your spouse’s email address and password. Email remains on the server and your spouse is none the wiser regardless of whether you check it before he or she sees it. Unfortunately, this does not give you the opportunity to read their outgoing emails.
A couple cautions about using online email retrieval. While you’re logged into your spouse’s account they may not be able to retrieve their email, so make sure that you check quickly and at a time that they wouldn’t normally be online. I did a test check of my POP email account through one of the online sites and, while I was logged into my email account through the site, I tried to access my email through my regular POP account. I received an error message that my email couldn’t be retrieved as my account was in use. That would be a big red flag for any spouse! If you’re planning on using an online site to snoop on your spouse’s email, it would be wise to test your own account first to see how the service works.
If your spouse has web-based email through Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., you’ll need to know their email address and password to log in and take a look at the received, sent and deleted email. If there is an option to automatically forward all incoming email to another account (and your spouse isn’t already forwarding it elsewhere) you can set it to forward to your own web-based account. A good idea is to open your own account with the same service so that you can learn the features of the service and not make mistakes that will alert your spouse to what you’re doing.
Don’t know your spouse’s password(s)? If they’re saved as ****, you can read them using a password recovery program.
Other than the possibility of getting caught snooping when your spouse gets a message about his or her POP account being busy if you’re online checking their inbox when they are waiting for email or when they intercept an autoresponse email from an email retrieval service, there’s not too much that can happen with your investigations so far.
Using spy software if your spouse is really intent upon covering his or her tracks is a gamble. If your spouse is computer literate he or she may also discover the spy software and then your hand is tipped.
As with all methods of trying to catch a cheater, if you have strong suspicions that your spouse is cheating, sooner or later something will happen to either confirm those suspicions or prove them wrong. If your suspicions are confirmed, you have to be ready to decide just exactly what your next actions will be.