As a private investigative firm, we deal with many types of investigations, from corporate espionage and intellectual property theft to basic background checks.  However, many of our cases deal with family law and contentious domestic situations.  Social Media such as Facebook have been a catalyst for infidelity and technology makes it easier to carry-on an illicit affair.  However, with all of the technology also comes a digital trail that can be traced and documented with the right tools and expertise.

Technology has created phones that are communication devices as well as gateways to more information and forms of communication that were never imagined possible.  iPhones in particular are used by many consumers as their smartphone of choice.   iPhones are in essence, small computers.  As with all computers, digital evidence of infidelity is logged and stored.  Even if the texts, pictures or emails were deleted, they are often recoverable with the right tools.

With the pervasiveness of mobile devices, it makes sense that the same mobile devices would be key in communications between an unfaithful spouse or significant other.   Before you hire a computer forensics expert, there are signs that you can look for to confirm your suspicions.   It’s much like understanding the criminal mind in order to catch them.  Knowing the ways in which an affair can be hidden can be key in discovering the affair and catching the cheater red handed.  If they have an iPhone, here are the 25 ways in which the cheater can attempt to hide the evidence of their affair:

1. Create a new email account that is only used to communicate with their lover.
2. Check their email communications with their lover through webmail and not iPhone email
3. Doesn’t save or have their iPhone remember their password or email address / login name for their communications with their lover.
4. Deleted links or “bookmark” to any webmail page used to communicate with their lover.
5. Change their wireless phone bill to “paperless billing” to hide communications with their lover.
6. Use 3rd party app for SMS / text messages so text does not show up on phone bill or online detail.
7. Save name of lover as false name and gender, so calls to / from that person are less suspicious.
8. Use 3rd party dialer like Skype or Google voice to make and receive phone calls so they will not show up on phone bill or online usage detail.
9. If using iPhone email to send / receive email, they can go to Settings -> Mail -> Account to enable mail for their lover when they want to check it, then disable mail when they are done so that account won’t show up in their list of mail accounts or “All Inboxes”, but it will still retain their settings and emails.
10. Disable location services to make it more difficult to be tracked. With location services enabled, certain web sites and apps can determine their location, and pictures they take on their iPhone will have the GPS coordinate information embedded in them which can show that they are not where they said they were.
11. Clearing their map / GPS history and directions history for locations they are going to with or meeting their lover.
12. Closing all web page tabs for web sites relating to their lover as soon as they are done with the page.
13. Clearing their internet history and cache for web sites they visited for their lover.
14. Clearing their call history for calls made to and from their lover as well as the calls made to the hotels, restaurants, travel agents, yacht rentals, etc.
15. Clearing their text / SMS history with their lover. If their lover is their spouse’s best friend or other person that they would be expected to have casual contact with the iPhone lets they selectively delete specific text messages.
16. Use their iPhone calendar to set up fake work-related or other non-suspicious appointments or meetings to give they an alibi to meet their lover
17. Use one of the many iPhone apps like “Fake Caller” to simulate an incoming call from their boss or co-worker where they will need to meet they at the same location where their lover will happen to be
18. Having their passcode set on their iPhone so if it falls into the wrong hands their phone will be locked and their information will be more secure.
19. Having their passcode set to auto-lock after a specified time.
20. Having their passcode “Erase Data” feature enabled which will erase their iPhone data if the wrong passcode is entered 10 times in a row.
21. If they sync their iPhone to their computer or use iTunes to transfer music to their iPhone, they can encrypt the iPhone backups that iTunes creates.
22. They can turn off the auto-preview for text messages, otherwise the content of the message or inappropriate pictures could show up on top of their passcode screen.
23. They use iPhone apps like TigerText to delete texts.
24. Purchase new phone used to secretly communicate with lover.
25. They use a fake passcode app.  The cheater tells the significant other the “fake” pass code which when entered, deletes all incriminating texts and other information.

Regardless of whether the device is a laptop, PC or Mac or iPhone there is always digital evidence to hide if you’re having an affair.  If you know what to look for, you can often find the evidence of an affair yourself.  If you need to delve deeper to find the evidence such as recovering deleted texts or pictures or other data, then you will need a computer forensics expert.