Tempted to use a tracking app on your partner? Read this first

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/tempted-tracking-app-partner-spywear

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Yesterday’s Daily Mirror carries an interview with a schoolteacher called Catharine Higginson, who discovered that her husband had installed a tracking device in her phone that allowed him to follow her every move and read all her text messages. This came to light when he made an important electronic bank transfer she had overlooked. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve sorted it.” At first Catharine was distressed. She had thought that she and her husband had “no secrets from each other”, whereas it turned out only that she had no secrets from him. But on reflection, she decided not to follow the advice of her friends – “Divorce him!” – and she decided she didn’t mind. “I view it as him caring about my wellbeing.”

This case caught my eye because I have recently researched tracking apps for a novel, and after doing so I equipped my principal villain with one. It never occurred to me that they might have a more benign use. If I found out that my own wife was tracking me with an app, I’d be doubly mortified: (a) by her nosiness and (b) by her superior technical knowledge. But our technical incompetence makes this an unlikely scenario. She would only benefit from monitoring my electronic money transfers if I learned how to do electronic money transfers. Neither of us are big on social media, so that’s another snooping opportunity blocked off. My wife is on Facebook, and the big issue there used to be her observations of our sons’ Facebook accounts. But she was quickly blocked by both of them.

No, if we were to spy on each other, it would be by oldfashioned methods: for instance, by picking up the little-used telephone extension and listening in. We actually do have one of these extensions, and it actually is in a study, like in many a rickety whodunit. Rather than hacking into each other’s emails, we would be more likely to steam open each other’s letters, although my wife needn’t bother with this since she often opens my letters anyway, and with only the most cursory apology. “Sorry,” she’ll say, “I thought it was for me” – whereupon I look at the ripped envelope, addressed without ambiguity to “Andrew Martin Esq” and wonder. If I divined that she was opening only the handwritten letters I receive, I might become resentful, but she reads a broad range of my correspondence.

The other traditional message of marital spying is for the wife to go through the man’s pockets before taking his suit to the dry cleaners or – let’s not be sexist about this – vice versa. My wife does go through my jacket pockets before hanging up my coats. Her excuse is that she wants the flaps to be hanging out, rather than in. The debris from the pockets is then put on my bedside table, so it is a good job that it does not, as a general rule, include condoms or Brighton hotel bills for the night when I said I was researching a book in Leeds.

In 1927 the suspicious wife of a certain Patrick Mahon discovered a left luggage ticket from Waterloo station in one of his pockets. She took the ticket to Waterloo and obtained a bag full of bloodstained women’s clothing in return. She discovered thereby that not only had her husband had a mistress but that he had also murdered that mistress in their Sussex love nest. “To err is human,” as Mahon no doubt reminded the arresting officer.

Therefore you should never try to find out too much about anyone, and in particular about what they think of you. We have all learned, I hope, not to Google our own names. One’s partner ought to be more generous than the general public, but it is unwise to try to find out by snooping on emails or letters. As for following my wife with a tracking app, that’s the modern equivalent of hiring a private detective to trace her steps, and a hundred classic detective stories tell us the likely result: a lot of people are going to end up dead.