Back to Home > Monday, Sep 04, 2006 Lifestyles Posted on Sun, Sep. 03, 2006 email this print this reprint or license this Rob Hernandez / Mercury News Vote: How do you define cheating via technology?

Call it crazy, paranoid or cynical, but the next time you peruse the personals on Craigslist or scan profiles on MySpace, consider this: There's a good chance you just ran into a cheater.

Just as purchasing concert tickets or checking baseball scores has become as simple as logging onto a computer, infidelity is a simple keystroke away.

Cheating is on the rise because technology eases the search to find a willing partner, according to therapists, researchers and relationship experts. The unfaithful no longer have to scour bars or cultivate workplace relationships. Cheating has increased along with the growing use of text messaging and cell phones, chat rooms and online dating sites, some exclusively targeting the polygamous.

No reliable figures exist on the increase in cheaters who use technology, but computer forensics expert John Lucich says the rise is undeniable. The president of Network Security Group, a firm in Union, N.J., hired for computer-related legal issues, says that 95 percent of the cases his company handles involve men and women who set up secret e-mail accounts for the purpose of cheating.

Online dating sites play a key role in connecting people searching for extracurricular activities. While mainstream services such as Match.com and Yahoo Personals ban married people from posting profiles, the dating sites can't stop users from lying. Other companies are happy to pick up the slack.

Private Affairs ( ), an online dating site based in Toronto, targets users looking for what it calls EMRs, or extramarital relationships. Another service, Ashley Madison Agency (www.ashleymadison.com ), boasts 1.03 million members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. With its tag line ``when monogamy becomes monotony,'' the company, also founded in Toronto, has seen its membership double annually, says operations director and founder Darren Morgenstern.

Once the connection is made, technology also helps the affair to thrive. Cell phones and PDAs give cheaters the chance to communicate privately and coordinate with their side dish.

Caryn, 37, a West Valley College student from Morgan Hill, knows this all too well. Like many wired people in Silicon Valley, she used to contact a former boyfriend almost exclusively on his cell phone.

Statistics on cheating vary widely because of the way pollsters word questions, says Infidelityadvice.com's Houston. The data also is muddied by dishonest responses. And as people debate the definition of sex, they similarly debate the definition of cheating.

Sexologist Shere Hite in 1988 shocked Americans when she reported that up to 70 percent of women married five or more years have sex outside of marriage. Other surveys have concluded that anywhere from 38 million to 53 million men in the United States have cheated on their wives at least once, Houston says.

But such ``studies,'' as well as research reported in popular magazines and advice columns, often inflate figures, according to Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. His 2004 study, ``American Sexual Behavior,'' which polled more than 10,000 people over 22 years, found that 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once.

Technology has helped the cause, prompting the curious to make the jump from fantasy to philandering, says Brian Person, a marriage and family therapist in Los Altos.

Network Security Group's Lucich is convinced that the rise in advertising and e-mail spam that hype cheating sites entice people to cross those boundaries, he says.

There is some small consolation in the rise of high-tech infidelity, Houston says, because cheaters are often unaware that they have left evidence of their affairs on their PCs or cell phones. E-mails are reportedly how Christie Brinkley found out her spouse was cheating on her with a local teenager.

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