I’d confront him about it, confirm it was he that installed it, and ask him what in the hell motivated him to do so. As I can’t invision a truly satisfactory answer to that, (well, I thought you were meeting strange men and arranging to give them blowjobs, you know…I have trust issues, muffin), I’d probably wind up breaking up with him. Maybe, if this were a really serious relationship and I was in love and all that fun stuff, I might insist on…taking a rather long break. There’s no reason for this but a serious lack of trust, and if I’m with somebody who doesn’t trust me, sorry, but fuck 'em.
Oh yeah, that would be breakup time, definitely. I guess if it was a long-term serious relationship I’d give it all due consideration before making any hasty decisions, but I can’t see any way to continue after something like that. If she felt extremely guilty about it, that would count in her favor. Some women just assume that they have the right to do these things, and I would never stay in a relationship with someone like that. I don’t think I’d ever be actively hiding something from a girlfriend either, I just think it’s wrong to spy on someone. I would never do that to a woman I was dating, and I expect the same level of trust coming the other way.
It would be a dealbreaker. I have no interest in being with someone that suspicious.
Straight to marriage counselling. Without trust, my marriage would be pointless and empty. I’d give it a second go, but I’d need to know why he felt he had to spy on me and why he couldn’t trust me anymore, or communicate openly anymore. And whether or not he thought it was worth trying to save the marriage.
Nothing. AFAIK, slimeware programs are trojans that hide inside other software.
If you are talking about network monitoring software, it’s quite a different beast.
Confront him, take it off, and then work from there. With my current SO, it’d result in my asking why the hell he was installing stuff on my computer.
Actually, something like this happened once. My ex–before he was my ex–had a password-grabbing program on his computer, and managed to get my AIM and AOL passwords. As a result, he was able to read my mail. A friend of mine and I started typing sections of romance novels back and forth to each other. Good times.
I spied on my wife (no spyware, but I had access to stuff she didn’t know I had access to), but it was only after she told me she was leaving. I did not and would not do it while I thought I still had a working relationship with her, but I was angry and had to confirm some of my suspicions.
Look, people, do you mind using the right terminology?
I could probably manage to avoid attempting to beat the snot out of an SO putting any sort of spyware on my computer. (Two issues, both large. One, its my computer. No touchies. Two, spying on me?!?!)
It would be hard though.
No, I can’t even really think of a situation where spying on me wouldn’t be an instant deal breaker. I’m very open about my life and activities in general, and what I don’t babble about I will answer questions regarding. Trying to gain more information than that about me will not only reveal nothing, but will get you permanently shut out of my life, in short order.
I know my SO monitored his live-in girlfriend’s online activities( Big Brother?) in the last months of their relationship, so when I suspected he was monitoring mine, I would begin all my emails with ‘Dear ____, I think my SO is monitoring my messages, sorry he’s breaching our privacy.’ I had an old friend send me flirty emails and I cruised the personal ads. He confronted me on the personal ads (said he’s looked back into History and saw this) and I told him I was just amusing myself. I don’t think he monitors me now, but as I have no interest in cheating or porn, he’d get over himself soon.
I’m with Medea’s Child. I’ve never heard of this stuff before, not being a computer nut myself, but the idea of anybody looking through my stuff, let alone my SO would bring down the very Heavans.
I don’t really have anything to be ashamed of, but I’m an only child who grew up spending a lot of time by myself and I value my privacy greatly.
Of course I would be very upset.
But I do have to admit that after I found out, I would give them an eyeful. I would send them on a wild goose chase without mercy.
I would backup all the files to disc and then I would delete everything connected with it except the program folder. Then I would make one page titles “Gotcha” in notebook and place that in the folder instead with the instructions that if he wanted to talk about it I would love to hear why he chose to destroy all my trust in him.
[aside]Urban: I wrote you a little note in the Pit instead of hijacking this thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=165576
[/aside]
Anyway, the use of keystroke interceptors, website use trackers, and other SPYWARE is the same to me as someone opening another persons mail or evesdropping on their calls. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
First reaction: Even as obnoxious as the scenario is, I’m finding it amazing how many folks are willing to toss it all aside without even finding out what was going on.
Preface all this below by realizing I’m primarily talking about an established relationship. If you find someone you’ve been dating 3 months pulling this stunt, I say “adios.”
Short-term relationships aside, I agree with those who indicate there IS a difference depending on whether there is something to find… If you’re a-cheatin and she starts a-snoopin I suspect you’ve already given her “probable cause” to do so in one way or another – though probably unconsciously. In any case, I’m not buying any self-righteous protestations of privacy invasion as your “out” because you got busted!
HOWEVER, If there is, in fact, nothing to find then this is a huge violation and destroyer of trust. BUT, in my case, I would first find out WHY my Mrs. Lizardo felt compelled to do it… Though I’d want to hear a VERY good reason. What’s a good reason?
Can only think of one real-life example, but better than a hypothetical I think: I had a dear old decades-long friend who hired a PI to follow her fiancee around…
WHY? because one of her close friends was spending all her time and energy trying to poison my friend’s mind against the fiancee. She convinced my friend the fiancee was having an affair. Of course it was clear to everyone BUT my friend that this person had a major crush on her and had an agenda to drive ANY man out of her life… Okay, it was a PI… But it could just as easily have been spyware, and it would have turned up the same result: de nada.
Now, here’s the operative point: had he found out and just randomly dumped her, it would have served nobody’s interest except the one party with ulterior motives…
Had he instead said “Dammit! How the hell could you possibly do this to me?” it might well have exposed an insidious problem that could have been fixed. Had I been in his shoes and learned what had been dribbled into her ear over the course of months, I could have been very understanding about why she ended up going the route she did…
ASIDE/DENOUEMENT: In the end, she dumped him because she was “convinced” that he was cheating despite no evidence other than this other woman muttering “all men cheat” in her ear all the time. She was devastated a year later when the female friend subsequently came on to her and she realized what we’d all told her was true. No happy ending yet… The original fiancee (11 months after she’d thrashed him) wanted nothing to do with her and she still hasn’t met anyone else, though we’re all hopin’
Addendum:
I feel I should clarify:
I expect that 90% of the time the answer to “why did you do this?” will be something like “uhhh. well… Uhhh… Hmmm. Uhhh.” in which case dumperoo is the way to go.
I’m not advocating automatic “forgive and forget” by any means at all! I’m simply saying maybe it’s worth a conversation (even if an uncomfortable one) to find out if maybe there is some rational reason someone felt driven to this extreme.
Because she wanted her Lizard straight, no Italian?
-
- All kidding aside, that was a terribly sad story about your friend. Life deals up really harsh lessons for some people.
Lizard -
Rush to judgement is a mistake I learned to avoid the hard way, and it took WAAAY too many lessons before it stuck!
PS - Mrs. Lizardo may well prefer her lizard straight, but unless you happen to speak Italian, you’ll have a tough time getting your point across to her!
Emilio.
Obviously, there would have to be a previously existing trust issue there, if your SO would feel the need to do anything like that. Some people are just strangely dishonest even when it is very small things that seem rather insignificant but can really exaggerate a partners insecurity or even create the question of , “well if they can lie about this and that and on a daily basis, what else might there be hiding in the unknown?” Trust is a wildly overrated thing it seems to me, considering we are all human and many of us humans lie without thinking twice about it. I think it is rather foolish to trust in anyone or anything blindly. However I have been told that I am jaded. I would never do anything like that though because my honey would absolutely freak out on me. It seems I cannot even look at the screen he is on without getting a dirty look. That alone could make one wonder…hmmmmm How much did you say these things cost?
Sorry, I should have been more clear. It was MY computer, that I owned before we got married, and my husband claimed to only use it occasionally. When I found a few pornographic pictures saved on a temp file, I asked him about it, and he denied everything. He denied even using the computer the day the temp file was created (I was out of town). After a few more rounds of the mysterious porn fairy coming in the night or while I was at work, I went to a website where you could buy a program that ran in the background, and recorded every single keystroke. It was invisible to my husband, and he proceeded to not only visit porn sites, but answer online personal ads and start e-mail correspondence with women, the context of which indicated that they were meeting IRL. The whole time I had just thought I may have been crazy about the pron thing, but knew he was a liar. It was $25 well spent, and I don’t feel guilty about it. The lesson I learned was that I should have just ended the relationship when I THOUGHT about spying on him.