E-flirting 'fuels adultery'

David Harding|Metro13 April 2012

Mobile phones and the Internet are helping us indulge in one of the oldest vices in the world - adultery.

One in three men and women admits using e-mails, text messages and chatrooms to flirt with potential partners or to nurture an affair, a study found.

Of those, one in five confessed to doing so every day, while six out of ten said they did so once a week.

Four in ten men and women questioned about relationships felt the advent of new technology had led to a major rise in the number of people being unfaithful. The problem is highlighted by celebrity cases such as that of former England footballer Stan Collymore, who was caught in a newspaper sting texting an undercover reporter that he would 'love to get intimate' with her.

Many people have become so paranoid that one in seven admits to secretly scanning their partners' e-mails and phone logs to check up on them.

One in five said they had found a flirty message from an unknown source, with some discovering details of an impending secret liaison.

Mishcon de Reya, the firm of divorce lawyers which advised Diana, Princess ofWales, said adultery cases had risen alarmingly in recent years.

The availability of instant communication has been reflected in an equally dramatic rise in divorces blamed on infidelity, it added.

'All this points towards the fact that, in modern Britain, to love longer people should log off,' said a spokesman.

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