I've noticed some people around here suggesting the use of keyloggers or other spyware to find out the truth about a cheating spouse. I understand the temptation but people need to be careful.
Laws generally protect a person's right to privacy even from their spouse. While it may seem perfectly justified to check up on suspicious behavior via snooping through email, text, chat, phone calls, etc you should be made aware that some of this behavior may be illegal. Many of the tools that can help snoop like spyware and keyloggers may be illegal as well. They get away with selling those software tools by having disclaimers which warn buyers to check the laws within their state. This is very important because breaking these laws can have a big impact on a D.
In my particular state, keyloggers and spyware are only legal to use secretly on people under 18. If you want to use them on people over 18, you have to disclose the fact that you are using them before the monitoring happens, so that will make it nearly impossible to catch a cheater legally with those tools in my state.
One tool that IS legal in my state is one of those typical USB GPS Trackers. As long as the person using the device is on the title of the vehicle and no physical modifications are made to the vehicle, those types of devices are legal to use secretly in my state.
Another thing that is legal in my state is recording conversations but ONLY if somebody present knows about the recording. So, as long as I'm present, I can secretly record conversations. However, I know of somebody in my state that placed a recorder in a W's vehicle. He admitted to recording her in her vehicle when he was not present. It turned out those recordings were illegal and it actually cost him custody of his children.
Reading a spouse's email may be illegal. For example, gaining access to a spouse's private email account without their consent is not legal in my state.
I read about someone being fined $20,000 by a judge for using spyware to snoop on a spouse. That might be an extreme example but I don't really know. An A is bad enough, so it would be a shame to compound the situation with illegal activity.
Most of the cases I've read about where snooping turned out to be illegal came down to ignorance. In some cases even the lawyers involved were unaware of the privacy laws. Also, the cases I've read about where snooping backfired boiled down to the snooper admitting to using a keylogger, spyware, hacking, etc. So, at the very least, if you can't resist the urge to snoop, at least keep the details of how you do it a secret or it could hurt you.
