Social technology: VoIP and the cheating spouse

With technology invading the parts of our lives that we have become accustomed to as private, we may find it increasingly difficult to trust our partner. Today’s social technology has made it much easier for ulterior motives in society to create false identities. One of the most popular reasons for false identities is infidelity. Since most find it easier to get involved in an affair by creating the illusion that one is available and single, the tools to support this illusion are invaluable to these people.

Before social media websites like MySpace and Facebook, only the wealthy could successfully create such an illusion. For example, a wealthy person could rent an apartment that his spouse would not be aware of, or fly out of town for a date under the pretext of a business meeting (while the subject of the affair thinks he is in town on business too). Arguably, these are stereotypical methods from the pre-web days of social media where these types of people shut off their desire to do such a thing. Most people today would agree that Internet technology has made the creation of such illusions accessible to almost anyone, not just the wealthy.

Today, social media is just one tool available to use in devious intentions to engage in extramarital affairs. VoIP technology also has its place in creating such illusions. The first item that cannot be overlooked is the price. An engineer from Baltimore, Maryland (who asked to remain anonymous so that we will call him Freddy) explained: “I convinced my wife to switch from our traditional analog phone to a VoIP system, with the new system I secretly got an additional line for a little under $ 10 and with that came a softphone. ” The softphone (short for software phone) is software that does everything a normal phone can do. “I just installed the softphone on my laptop so that anywhere I carry my laptop and can have access to a broadband internet connection, I have an instant home phone line, when actually I’m calling from a library or Starbucks, “Freddy explained. Freddy further boasted that his softphone account leaves no paper trail in the form of an invoice and therefore he does not have to hide anything from his wife. Freddy went on to share that he had been caught in the past when participating in such activity, the only difference was at the time he was using a prepaid cell phone. “One day my fiancé and I were at home watching TV and my prepaid cell phone rang, it goes without saying that there was no good reason I could find to justify having that in my possession, so I was arrested.” Freddy admitted that he and his then fiancé broke up shortly after that.

Another player (no pun intended) in the voip veiled extracurricular romance field is a young woman we’ll call Sarah (she also asked to remain anonymous). Sarah has successfully navigated 3 adventures in the last 2 years and has not raised the slightest suspicion in her husband. “I have found that most of my girlfriends have been caught by their husbands because they are always whispering on the phone and / or hanging up when her husband came into the room, my solution to such a situation is for my VoIP service to text me . versions of my voicemails. This reduces the time it would take for me to first listen to the message and then try to call my lover. ” Sarah is talking about the voice-to-text features that many VoIP services offer. VoIP technology is a robust technology in the context of converting data into multiple formats for consumption (voicemail, text messages, email); Such messages can be interpolated into text, as VoIP uses packets of data just like a web browser does to communicate over the Internet. Such data is already digital, so software for converting digital information to text is a very short but logical interval. Sarah also explained that she was pleased to be able to break off their relationships with ease. Sarah’s VoIP account allows her to set rules and enter her ex-lover’s phone number, so that if a call comes in from the separate lover’s number, she won’t allow the call to go through to voicemail or the phone device.

As society reaps enormous benefits from each new technological discovery, it should not be said that there is a clear probability of latent dysfunctions. Although we find better ways to communicate with each other, we also expand our inability to trust others. Obviously, with the collapse of these aspects of our society, it is mere proof that these technologies work and are as effective as they promise. But this efficiency comes at a price. One concept that many may choose to agree on and that can reassure most of our minds is that, in any case, technology itself is not the enemy; they are the intentions of the individual who uses it.