Electronic privacy impacts our lives in many ways and concerns all of us as more and more entities have access to our sensitive information. One place we tend to forget in terms of account access is our spouse, especially as a marriage heads toward divorce.
During a marriage, couples routinely share accounts and even passwords, for obvious reasons. But one common area poses a big risk when a divorce looms – the mobile phone.
Usually, a couple will have phones on one account to save money and take advantage of family sharing. For example, if you have an iPhone, you can turn on family sharing and it will allow all members of the family access to different shared items designated by the account administrator. It allows sharing music, but also potentially much more, from contacts to location via GPS. Also, you can activate the sync function which will allow a user to access accounts on various devices.
If a spouse files for divorce before unsyncing accounts and changing passwords, the other spouse could have easy access to all texts and contacts the filing spouse sends – including to that spouse’s attorney. A spouse that is tech savvy could download all of these texts and other data, or even set up a spyware on the phone before a disconnect.
If you know you will be filing for divorce, you should, in advance of filing, unsync all your devices from the other spouse’s account and change all of your passwords. You should probably buy a new phone and port the number so you will be able to keep your phone number but not have it connected in any way to your estranged spouse. The longer you delay, the greater the chance you have that the other spouse will spy on you.
If you have questions about electronic security and divorce, contact us – we can help.