(no subject)

[ocelot]

Ok, curiosity/sanity check time...

Your significant other suspects you of some sort of serious wrongdoing. Their suspicion (whether accurate or not) is reasonable. They install a keylogger on your computer. How would you react?

Also... do you share your internet passwords with your SO, or have a shared email account (and no separate personal account) or anything like that?

(non-friends feel free to answer this!)

ETA: This question is NOT prompted by anything in my personal life, but by a thread elseforum. koyote and I are totally on the same page on this issue.

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

a) Dealbreaker or pretty close.

b) No, not at all.

[savia.livejournal.com]

Installing a keylogger is a serious breech of privacy for anyone, including and especially intimate partners. I would be furious.

If there is suspicion of wrongdoing then the solution is not creepy control tactics but approaching the person, discussing the problem, and counseling. Looking for a "gotcha" is not helpful and is signs of serious trust issues that are pretty much grounds for breakup/divorce, really. If my partner installed a keylogger without my knowledge and I found out about it, I would immediately suggest we separate and go to counseling. But that's just me. The bulk of my communication is online, and to think that my partner would be doggedly monitoring every word looking for some suspicious activity is just too creepy and scary for words. It shows a total absence of trust and a need for total control.

My husband and I know each other's passwords just because we've had to ask each other to log into email to check something or whatever, but we would never log into each other's private email to snoop. There is no reason for it. If I suspected anything, I would talk to him first and get counseling. Fortunately, that is not an issue for us. And my husband is kind of a luddite, so I doubt I have to worry about things like keyloggers in any case. :)

[savia.livejournal.com]

I would also like to add that I think it's necessary and good for spouses/partners to have private parts of their lives that their partners/spouses are not privy to. Not like hoarding secrets, but just having one's own space and one's own life. It's healthy. Which is why invasion of that is so wrong - it's claiming ownership over someone else's autonomous space.

If you are worried, ask questions. If you don't believe the answers, then leave, get counseling, or both.

[figgy-newton.livejournal.com]

I agree with the previous comments. The key logger is wildly inappropriate. I think E knows one of my passwords, but I have tiers of them and it is a low-level password. I would trust him with it if I needed him to log in for me for some reason, but that trust is exactly why he and I would never ask each other for those things.

[savia.livejournal.com]

Regarding the ETA, I'm glad to hear it! :)

[jodisue.livejournal.com]

Keylogger is wrong. If there's suspicion you have to be able to talk to the person and air it out. I can see a keylogger or other content blocker installed *knowingly* by both partners as some sort of accountability plan, but not as a way to find out if something is wrong.

Hubby and I know each others passwords, and we feel free to check each other's mail (usually in the situation of his or my email having a needed phone number or address or something like that). I'm the only one of us that has a FB account and hubby checks it regularly because he doesn't want one of his own but likes to see what everyone he knows on my flist is up to.

[twirlingecho.livejournal.com]

I would not like it if Pat installed a keylogger because he was suspicious of me... mostly because I would be shocked and saddened that he didn't just talk to me about the issue, because that's what we do- talk about stuff. If I found out he installed a keylogger for the purpose of testing it or something for work, however, it wouldn't bother me one tiny little bit. Of course, if he did, he would tell me about it beforehand. Although, he's pretty serious about internet privacy and security issues, so I'm sure he would set up a separate machine to test such a thing.

We don't have a shared e-mail account. Pat knows all my passwords. And I know his for personal and family business stuff. I do not know his work passwords, and I don't care. I would be fine if Pat read all my e-mail, FB, LJ stuff, because I tell him all about it anyway. I'm not a secret sort of person. My parents also know my passwords, and I know theirs. But they don't need to check my stuff, because I tell them everything, too. Although I'm pretty sure my dad zones out when I start talking about my online friends. :-)

[live-momma.livejournal.com]

The keylogger thing is just weird. I watch enough Forensic Files (with DH) to think that there could be situations where it would be... reasonable. If you feel the need to do it, you sure as hell better be leaving the other person, whether you find something or not. But, if you think your spouse is trying to kill you (literally), and you can't get protection without proof, go for it. Did I mention the Forensic Files thing? LOL Anything short of that, just get out and move along.

As for passwords, I know DH's. If he doesn't know mine, he hasn't been paying attention. My computer remembers most of them automatically, though, so it's not hard for him to access whatever he wants. Not that he ever does.

[dymphna79.livejournal.com]

I think it's really easy for people who haven't been in a serious situation to answer this, without knowing what one would actually do in real life.

My background: for a very short time, I suspected my spouse of... not cheating, but I thought she was keeping something secret from me, some kind of email or emotional affair. In the back of my mind, I thought MAYBE it was an actual physical affair or had the potential to go there. In the very, very back of my mind, I thought it might be something worse that I wasn't willing to put words to.

I gave her several opportunities to come clean and finally asked straight out who she was spending so much time chatting on the computer with, and I didn't think she was telling me the truth.

I never really considered checking her email (and wouldn't have thought about anything so techy as keystrokes) because I was raised to think reading someone else's mail was unequivocally wrong. But when I googled "what do I do if I think my spouse is having an affair", many, many random links mentioned "if you have solid proof, such as emails..." Finally, I just went in her email--she knew I had the password, and she had mine, because we often said things like "hey, would you get this address off my sister's last email?"--and found what I needed to know in about ten seconds.

It might seem wrong, and some people are still going to think it's wrong because the end doesn't justify the means and yadda yadda. But if I hadn't done that, nothing would have happened, I would still be married. Because my ex was never going to admit to me, to a therapist, anyone, that she was a fucking child molester.

And I never would have left if it hadn't been something like that--I wouldn't have left over trust issues or whatever I was supposed to do when I asked my spouse a straightforward question and she lied about it--because I married for life.

Obviously I have major, major trust issues now, not just in romantic relationships but with people in general. For a long time I even had trouble trusting myself. If my spouse or significant other spied on me, I think I would get it. It wouldn't matter, because I honestly do not think I would ever do something spy-worthy. But if it was a one-time thing and not a part of an ongoing jealousy/suspicious thing, it would get a "hey, you can trust me completely, okay?" from me.

Hell, if my SO suspected me of doing something like molesting a child, I would WANT that to happen, because I would want to be stopped.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Screening your comment when I'm done because I'm not sure you actually intended to leave it on a public entry. If you want it public, let me know, and I'll unscreen.

Sounds like your line is similar to mine - if I was seriously concerned about someone's safety, I'd consider snooping. It would have to be something serious enough to be worth potentially destroying the relationship over regardless of whether I was right or wrong.

I'm sorry you went through that.

My own personal experience on the wrong end of a keylogger (for no good reason) makes me perhaps a bit on the sensitive side in the other direction. Though it seems my feelings on the matter aren't actually as unusual as it seemed based on the post ielsewhere that inspired the question.

[dymphna79.livejournal.com]

It's all in the past--I did mean for it to be public, but thanks for your sensitivity.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Ok, just wanted to be sure, since I normally post friends-only these days, so it wouldn't have been unreasonable to think that was the case.

I had wondered what caused you to leave the area so suddenly.

[dymphna79.livejournal.com]

It's sort of... funny, but not exactly... to think about how naive I was back then--I left the area so suddenly in large part because I was certain the media would be coming after me at any moment. I'd seen similar stories on the local news and in the paper in the past, some of which weren't nearly as bad as what my ex did, plus I knew this story had a particular hook in the Land of Prop 8 that they might run with. It didn't end up in the media at all for various reasons, perhaps due to my own panicked efforts.

[telemicus]

I completely agree with this:

I think it's really easy for people who haven't been in a serious situation to answer this, without knowing what one would actually do in real life.

Most people can live their entire lives in a trusting relatively simple relationship and that's great, and they can come on here and say OH NO I WOULD NEVER DO THAT we can just talk about everything, la la la. Well, as you very bravely shared here, life is not that simple. Sometimes you need to go that extra mile because just talking is not going to cut it.
In the same vein I would be mad if I was the one being spied on, but because I understand the things that can happen, I would have to just get over it. I'd love the luxury of saying I would leave someone if they did X Y or Z but it is just not that simple.

That being said, I agree that keylogging etc is not to be taken lightly, is NOT a normal thing, and I don't think marriages need to be run in an entirely transparent no-expectation-of-privacy way - as in Dymphna's case, there were suspicions and other avenues had been exhausted.

If you warned the OP that her partner may react strongly to being spied on then good for you, as she could lose him in that situation, and needs to weigh that against everything else. I'm sorry you got jumped on Jess, I've had that before and it feels horrible no matter how looney the people are. But yeah just to come out and say "oh I would never do that" is too Pollyanna for my life.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

Really, it was so out there that it didn't feel particularly bad. Just one of those moments of realization that there are people that have a TOTALLY different worldview than I do.

[silver-aeris.livejournal.com]

I would be really upset about the keylogging thing. But I would want to be understanding. If they really think something was wrong I can see why they might do such a thing. But I would need to have whatever trust issue worked out and if something like that happened again I don't know what I would do.

I don't have a SO, but when I did, I didn't exactly share my passwords with them, but I didn't care if they knew what they were as I always checked my email in front of them and sometimes I told them my email password if I couldn't access a computer and I wanted them to check something for me.

[dempcat.livejournal.com]

I'd pretty much break up with anyone who put a keylogger on my computer.

I've shared passwords with SOs, but I'm not sure I would, anymore. I think I've been lucky in the past, and I don't want to tempt fate.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That. There is a LOT I will (and have) put up with. That would be so far into final-straw territory the two halves of the camel would land in different states.