Unhappy The Americans and the French are not so very much apart in the end, at least when it comes to the role of technology in relationship break ups.

After French newspaper Le Monde reported yesterday on couples’ mobile phone spying behaviour, now the International Herald Tribune has its own take on the matter, although - frankly - it doesn’t provide much real insight:

“The age-old business of breaking up has taken a decidedly Orwellian turn, with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases.

Spurned lovers steal each other’s BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into each other’s e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities.

Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about their clients’ adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers.”

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