Are you a snooper?

[SnooperLoopy]

I've name changed for this to preserve my reputation as a GLM (Good Little Mumsnetter) but I have to say I find it so weird how opposed some people are to snooping on your partner's phone.
I would happily:

• snoop your phone
• go through your bathroom cabinet
• read your diary

and feel no shame in doing so. I wouldn't even justify it with concerns about infidelity etc - I'm just nosey. But I would draw the line at sharing what I found with others or ever mentioning any of it to the snoopee (even if I discovered they had betrayed me I wouldn't let on how i had found out). I don't know why I feel this way but i genuinely don't understand the outrage admissions of snooping generate. I bet there are others like me, so fess up!

Baffled that you remain such good friends with someone like this

Ewwww…I hate the idea of someone going through my private stuff. I grew up with a mum who had no boundaries, no concept of privacy. Would walk into my bedroom at all hours without warning, continually leave my door open, would retort ‘don’t be ridiculous, I’m your mother’ if I asked for privacy while taking shits and then continue her conversation with me.

People’s private stuff is their stuff - just because you don’t care if people look at your private things doesn’t mean that they feel the same way. If you can’t respect that potential boundary, then you don’t actually respect other people. You feel you have a right to knowledge of their personal affairs, without them knowing about it.

No matter how you try to dress it up or laugh it off…it doesn’t cast you in a good light, @SnooperLoopy.

A crime i would report to the police and suspicious of infidelity i would just speak to the person

Separate to the above i have no secrets, in one way I dont care what people know about me but anyone who starts snooping or interrogating me i would take issue with, as I am a mature grown up i wouldn't do this to anyone else at all

We use each others phones but I never go in and read things. Based on the ones that pop up sometimes when I use it they’re mostly about football, sport, running and him sending reels to a couple of friends. People are allowed their privacy, there might be times when he might want to moan about me and that’s fine…I moan about him sometimes to my friends.

Fucking HELL OP are you for real?

I honestly cannot believe an adult would a) behave like this and b) experience no shame whatsoever.

Of COURSE I wouldn't snoop on someone else's phone. What on earth would drive you to do that? It is unspeakably disrespectful and just downright weird. In fact if I see a message come up on a friend's phone I consciously avert my gaze. And it wouldn't even occur to me to look through their personal belongings.

DH and I know all the passwords for each others devices and again it wouldn't even occur to me to read his messages unless I had a fucking good reason to do so, which has never cropped up in twenty years of marriage.

If I'm ever needing to sorting out my teens' belongings and come across personal papers, notebooks etc I take my glasses off so that I can't see anything personal.

I'm honestly gobsmacked. What is wrong with you?

The Op has shuffled off to do some snooping

And will revert to her good mumsnetter name because the Op is embarrassed to be snooper and knows that it is a bit…. Off

We see through you OP 😆

No absolutely not, as my mum was like you, and I found it to be a massive invasion of privacy.

Nope. Brought up not to snoop - reading other people’s letters a terrible crime. I can’t say I’m not tempted. I once did read a letter from someone else to my boyfriend and it was all about how he should stop moaning about me and should just break up with me. So that should have cured me. Also I’m a terrible Googler of ex-boyfriends but luckily I’ve mostly gone out with people called John Brown or Andrew Jenkinson so it doesn’t get me very far. Can’t even imagine snooping in dp’s phone though.

Absolutely not. I despise nosey people. Snooping is a deal-breaker for me.

I would break up with someone for snooping on my phone - its not ok.

Hope your friends and family know that no private thought is safe around you op

You're also a CRIMINAL.

It's a criminal offence under the computer misuse act 1990, to access a device without the permission of the owner.

Well, I'll grant that I do realise a lot of people would be appalled and I don't want to deal with the social fallout, but I am not ashamed of myself.

If you have got to the stage where you want to snoop on your partners phone to uncover infidelity your relationship is absolutely finished, either sooner or later.

Most people know and agree that this sort of behaviour is morally unacceptable.

I'm an extremely nosy person but I am not a snooper at all.

Which I know sounds contradictory, but it's hard to explain.

I'm a right old curtain twitcher and I love listening in overhearing the neighbour's conversations, and I love a good snoop on Facebook but I don't ever and wouldn't ever go through something that someone expects to be completely private. I would feel far too much guilt and I would be scared of seeing something I don't want to see.

I’ve never snooped, because I’d hate it if my husband went through my phone (I do have trauma behind this, my ex was always going through my phone and deleting anything he didn’t like, going through the messages I sent to my mum etc.). It’s an invasion of privacy imo to snoop through people’s things.

I won't invade anyone's privacy with phones etc, but given half the chance I would look in your fridge/freezer/food cupboard/spice rack. I love knowing what other people eat. I also love being at the checkout in a supermarket and seeing what other meals people buy too!

I would be a snooper by inclination, but I’m also intensely private and would hate anyone snooping on me, so as an adult I try and respect privacy.

However, I have snooped on my dc, and read diaries, which gave me valuable insight when one was struggling with MH, and the other was going through a friendship group collapse. I wouldn’t breathe a word but it allowed me to ask the right question when the opportunity arose.

And I had a look at my dh’s internet search history once when I was covering my own tracks which was a bit shocking because it was completely predictable and dull. No random searches or rabbit holes or weird side tracks at all.

I have a theory that snoopers probably have secrets of their own to hide.

I'm not a snooper. Probably because I have no interest in what other people have on their phones or in their diaries or anything.

Would you be OK with people going through your phone, medicine cabinets and diary?

If so I don't really know what to say other than your views on privacy seem fairly unusual and extremely lax. Do you not believe that other people's lives are not for your public consumption, without that person's consent?

If someone did those things to me I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.

In general I would say I value privacy. I don't say or do anything that I'm ashamed of behind closed doors so to speak but equally I think there's a certain level of respect and trust that goes with not snooping that I appreciate. I grew up with my mum snooping because she didn't parent in a way that meant we could be open with her and it always felt like a total violation and further damaged an already difficult relationship. So it's not something I generally condone.

However, I have snooped in the past when I was suspicious of now stbxh and that's how I found out he was having an affair. First time in 7 years I'd ever done anything like that. So on the whole not a snooper, however I think it needs to be in an exceptional circumstance (worried for someone's mental health or worried you're being cheated on etc) and for a reason if you are going to do it otherwise its just a bit intrusive. I guess the other issue with it is that some people do it in a controlling way and if we set the standard that snooping is always fine, it just makes it easier for people to be abusive and harder for victims to identify it.

Not phone but yes to bathroom cabinet 👀. I'm a skincare nut so I wouldn't be interested in anything else but their moisturisers.

I would never look in someone's diary friend, partner or relative. I would however,check my partner's phone if I had suspicions that they were having an affair.

The social fall out?

On mumsnet 😆

and I honestly don't care if someone reads something personal of mine,

so why the name change?

I have end up feeling a bit embarrassed for this Op!