Be careful, someone may be monitoring your every keystroke as your read your daily dose of Appolicious. Although if the most scandalous part of your day is reading Appolicious, you’re probably fine. Everyone else should be more concerned.
I offer that warning because according to a story from Mashable one-third of 1,000 respondents surveyed about online privacy admitted to snooping on their child, significant other or spouse.
That is a lot of people, which will only grow as smartphone consumption becomes more frequent! But today, at the very least, one in every three girlfriends or boyfriends you’ve ever had has totally tried to check out your browsing history and figured out you probably read too much about fantasy baseball among other things. The other two thirds just didn’t know how to do it without getting caught, I suspect.
My own personal policy is to let sleeping dogs lie. I cover my Internet tracks pretty well, if only because excess browser data usually slows things down and I don’t think I’ll ever be called to testify about my web browsing records of two months ago. I also have no interest in anyone else’s Internet history. Sure, checking on a girlfriend’s browser cache might clue me in that she’s a lousy person, but I’d probably find out sooner than later and this way I can at least act surprised.
If this story has you a bit spooked, that’s understandable, too. As the Mashable story notes, people get bent out of shape when faceless companies spy on them, and it’s even more unnerving when someone you share your bed with is checking in on you behind your back.
No need to bring your smartphone to the shower
But you don’t need a tinfoil hat to stay relatively private around a loved one. At least not until my mind-reading patent finally hits paydirt. A quick cursory App Store search reveals two apps right away that might ease your not-so-private mind.
Red Handed Cam ($0.99) seems to be just what the doctor ordered if you feel like you need to take your phone into the shower to keep people from reading your texts. Yes, I know someone who does that, and no, it is not me.
Once you set Red Handed Cam, the next time someone grabs your iPhone it will record a picture of them. Proof positive at least that they were touching your iPhone. Sure, they might have just wanted to play a game and not been snooping at all, but if you’re going to be a weirdo about your phone, you may as well have an app help you out.
Then there’s the Privacy Mode ($0.99) app. It’s a little older, but if you want to do some browsing on your iPhone without worrying about clearing out your personal data later, this one should save you the extra work.
Of course, both of these suggestions really just ignore the problem. If there’s someone desperately snooping on your iPhone, either you have done something to warrant the behavior or your significant other might not be “the one” you think they are.
Me, I’d leave the iPhone lying around and let this sort itself out. It’s a big dating pool out there, and not every swimmer is a nosy weirdo.
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