Men top cyber snooping poll

Thursday, February 2, 2012 - 09:49 by David Aiken

Ten per cent of British men have logged into an online account belonging to a partner or spouse without their knowledge, according to a study commissioned by insurance firm, Esure.

This level of cyber snooping, which includes checking up on social networking sites and the safe shopping online activities of people with whom they are in a relationship, is much lower amongst women, with just six per cent of females saying that they had logged in illicitly.

The reason that so many people are able to effectively hack the online accounts of their loved ones is being blamed on weak password choices, which can be easily guessed by anyone who knows the 'victim' well, according to the Daily Mail.

If a password cannot be guessed then it can often be found lying around the house for all to see, the study found.

Password security is regularly pronounced to be lacking by experts on the subject and 24 per cent of Brits apparently keep all of their passwords to online accounts in one place.

While snooping by a family member or partner can be damaging to relationships, if your e-commerce or online bank accounts are compromised, then the repercussions might be far more serious.

Twenty per cent of respondents to the Esure survey said that they rely on their mother's maiden name to use as a password, which means that almost anyone would be able to find out this information and compromise their accounts.

Spokesperson, Nikki Sellers, said that because people are having to use more and more passwords, the incentive to write them down may become greater, to avoid forgetting them altogether. However, most security experts agree that if you lose these written passwords, then you will be exposing yourself to much more than a snooping husband or boyfriend who wants to see how much you are spending shopping online.