29 January,2009 10:25 AM IST | | Anshuman G Dutta, Shashank Shekhar
Well-heeled couples are hiring cyber security experts to peep into their partners' Internet surfing details
Hiring a Sherlock Holmes to keep an eye on your partner is passu00c3u00a9. Call up a hacker to peep into his or her Internet surfing records if you doubt he or she is cheating on you. And all this will be done in utmost secrecy.
E-spying, or checking on your partners' mobile and Internet records, is gaining ground among well-heeled Indian couples, who shy away from calling up private detectives to physically follow their partners around.
Status conscious
"These people are very conscious of their social status and don't want to compromise it in any way. They are not comfortable hiring private detectives to check on their partners. A hacker, who can track their partner's email details and Internet chats, suits them better," said cyber security expert Sunny Vaghela, who helped a man from Ahmedabad track his wife who had been cheating on him.
The man was married to a girl named Monica (name changed on request) who was having any extra-marital affair with her boyfriend. The situation worsened when Monica filed a harassment case against her husband and her father-in-law. The miffed husband asked Vaghela to track her Internet surfing details on his laptop that was used by her.
"The surfing details proved she was in touch with another man and was having a close relationship with him. With the help of these details he filed a case against her," said Vaghela.
What's better is that the evidence produced by cyber spying is admissible in the court. Delhi-based High Court advocate Gurpreet Singh, who works with a law firm that specialises in cyber crime cases, said, "Though hacking is illegal but electronic evidence can be considered while fighting a case. One can always produce evidence from public domains like social networking websites and blogs to strengthen a case."
The trouble is that hacking can land you in legal trouble. "Many people feel cyber spying will prevent unwanted media attention. But this may land them in a legal soup, as hacking is illegal as per the Information Technology Act 2000," said Delhi-based hacker Vivek Vohra.
However, there is a legal way too. If the computer that is being hacked is owned by the person who wants to spy on its activities, he or she can approach a cyber expert with a consent letter.
